“Sakıp Sabancı Mardin City Museum and Dilek Sabancı Art Gallery enables the art lovers of the city to view the personal exhibition of Ai Weiwei, one of the most prominent figures of contemporary art. The “Ai Weiwei in Mardin” exhibition embodies impressions from the artist’s life as well as his perspective on handicrafts tradition and art history. The exhibition focuses on the artist’s porcelain works, bringing together a selection from his past and recent works. Porcelain, which has great cultural and historical significance fulfills the function of opening a door for the basic questions the artist poses regarding authenticity, the evolution of value systems over time and art’s role in influencing social change. Ai Weiwei’s art relates his message on our current era via traditional Chinese handicrafts, thereby providing the visitors a perspective on the paradoxes of our time.Ai Weiwei believes that social change is one of the basic elements of artistic creation and renders the distinction between political activism and contemporary art ambiguous through his actions related to crises in our world today. His selection of porcelain objects provides a medium whereby his work presenting the visitors new ways of looking at and interpreting the world can be discovered.” (sakipsabancimardinkentmuzesi.com)

photo credit: SSM