Asian Art Newspaper recently caught up with two of China’s most important contemporary art figures, Ai Wei Wei, artist, curator, publisher, architect, mentor and impresario, and Feng Boyi, art critic, international curator and editor of the China Artists’ Association newsletter, Artist’s Communication, since 1988.
Feng and Ai organised the infamous Fuck Off (Uncooperative) exhibition at the Eastlink Gallery that delivered a defiant counterpoint to the Shanghai Biennial of 2000. It protested the heavily censored, official art shown there. It was closed down by the police within a week of opening but its effects are still reverberating around the Chinese artists’ community.