BIOGRAPHICAL CATALOG OF THE MODEM'S COVERS AUTHORS

4 2012 Modem Women’s Milano Modem Women’s Paris Fall-Winter 2012-2013 Covers by AI WEIWEI CONTEMPORARY ARTIST Ai Weiwei , born in Beijing in 1957 and son of the poet and intellectual Ai Qing (1910-1996). In 1979, with other Chinese artists, he founded the avant-garde group “ Stars group” . The works made during this period will be exhibited every 10 years. In the early 1980s, after graduating from the Beijing Film Academy, he moved to New York where he attended the Parsons School of Design and The Art Students League. Choosing New York as a land of expression, he photographed daily the world around him. He continued this practice in Beijing, where he returned in 1993, showing the multiple aspects of the urban and social reality of China. His photographs are meant as a testimony of the contradictions of modernity and of anarchic capitalism, of which he perceives the development in his country. Ai Weiwei is an activist artist and social critic of the Chinese Government’s stance on democracy and human rights to move reality and help shape it. As an architect, sculptor, photographer, he is an insightful observer of the issues and societal problems of today, a great supporter of communication and net- works, and an artist who knows how to introduce life into art and art into life. Ai Weiwei quickly became one of the major artists of the independent Chinese art stage, producing a prolific, iconoclastic and provocative. He was artistic consultant for the Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron during the construction of the Beijing national stadium built for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Ai Weiwei’ s works have been exhibited in the United States, Belgium, Italy, Germany, France, Australia, China, Korea and Japan. His work was presented at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999 (Italy); to the First Guangzhou Triennial of 2002 (China); at the 2006 Sydney Biennale and at Documenta 12 in Cassel, Germany, where he bring “1001 Chinese”.