At the opening reception of the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei exhibition Who am I? at Palazzo Fava in Bologna, Italy, a man shattered a porcelain sculpture of the artist, to the astonishment of visitors.
In a security video posted on Ai’s Instagram after the incident a man identified while 57-year-old Vaclav Pisvejc from the Czech Republic theatrically knocks over the artist’s “Porcelain Cube” (2009) and then hold a fragment of the artwork above his head before four guards knock him to the ground.
Pisvejc reportedly has a record of vandalism stretch back to at least in 2018, when he hit performance artist Marina Abramovic over the head with a framed portrait of her. When she later asked him why he did it, he replied: “I had to do it for my art.”
According to Palazzo Fava, the destroyed artwork demonstrates a mixture of Western avant-garde and traditional Chinese craft.
“The act of vandalism against Ai Weiwei’s work ‘Porcelain Cube’ is even more shocking when we consider that several of the works on display explore the theme of destruction itself,” exhibition curator Arturo Galansino said in a statement to Hyperallergic.
One installation during the show, “Left Right Studio Material” (2018), shows a bed of shattered porcelain from the Chinese government’s destruction of Ai’s studio in Beijing that same year, opposite a replica of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’ (c. 1495-1498), which is the wreck of the ‘Porcelain Cube’ reflects.
Galansino added that Ai is 1995 Dropping a Han Dynasty urn The photography series, in which the artist drops an ancient vase, was intended to signify the “destruction of the past in recent Chinese history.”
“The destruction that Ai Weiwei depicts in his works is a warning against the violence and injustice committed by those in power,” the curator explains. “[It] has nothing to do with this violent, potentially dangerous, reckless and senseless act of a common troublemaker.”
In a brief response to HyperallergicAi wrote: “This incident has occurred.”
