This year, as usual, there was an amazing display of student art in the middle school hallway for the annual art show. The web gallery is an incomplete show of many student artworks with topics ranging from an exploration of Freud’s “id” to portraits, from animals to Shakespeare and beyond.

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On Friday, the Upper School art classes visited Ai Weiwei’s exhibit on Alcatraz. Ai Weiwei, a 57 year old contemporary artist from China, is both very controversial and internationally known. A political activist and critique of the Chinese government, Weiwei creates his art in different mediums to express his views on a myriad of modern issues. Weiwei recently created an art piece that was a map of China made out of baby formula tins. There was a scandal about milk formula safety, since many children got sick from it. He used this as an opportunity to criticize China, and he struck a sensitive nerve for many.
Similarly, for another one of his works, Weiwei created portraits of political prisoners from 1.2 million lego bricks. This part of the exhibit consists of six large carpets of Lego blocks that illustrate the portraits of more than 175 political prisoners, both from the past and present. His exhibit also consisted of a giant paper dragon, stretching the width one of the larger rooms in a decommissioned industrial building. The colorful beast bears resemblance to a dragon one might see during a Chinese New Year celebration, with the exception that it has quotations from Nelson Mandela, Edward Snowden, and the artist himself printed upon it. On the lowest level, only to be viewed from a narrow corridor, is Refraction, a five-ton sculpture resembling a bird’s wing. Almost blending into the Alcatraz environment, the sculpture is constructed out of numerous metal sheets. Look more closely, and you can see that they are actually solar panels, used for cooking in parts of Tibet. Placed on top of the panels are Tibetan cooking tools, such as a kettle, a wok, and a cheap aluminum steamer.
Weiwei also utilized a dozen ground-level cells for a more auditory experience. A steel stool was placed in each cell, each one weighing 150 lbs, juxtaposed with the depressing image of chipped paint and the disintegrated surroundings. If you were to sit on that stool you would hear music, or even poetry or speeches, recited and sung by various political prisoners. In one of the cells you could hear Martin Luther King’s incendiary 1967 speech against the war in Vietnam. In another you could hear the voice of Tibetan singer Lolo, currently serving a six-year sentence for the Chinese government calls “splittism”.
In the medical wing, while not obvious at first, people passing through could see that the sinks, toilets, and bathtubs are filled with white flowers made of porcelain, one of Weiwei’s commonly used materials. They are an echo of Mao’s “let a hundred flowers bloom” crackdown in the 1950s, where the chance for free expression masked cruel government retribution.
Unfortunately, Weiwei was unable to travel to San Francisco to see his own exhibit due to the restrictions of the Chinese government. He however, completed his works from Beijing. Weiwei has been in trouble before, as he was detained for 81 days in 2011.
Alcatraz is a historically rich sight in San Francisco. In 1850, it was used as a defense system for the city. During this time, a fortress was constructed and cannons were installed on the island to protect the San Francisco Bay. The army had control of Alcatraz and used it as a place to hold prisoners during the Civil War. It was an ideal prison location due to its difficulty in escaping. Later, from 1934 to 1963, it was used as a federal prison with maximum security. It was eventually closed down due to the high costs for maintenance. It was later occupied by Native Americans in 1969, and in 1972, it was converted into a national park.