Finally, I’ve made it to one of my favourite artists’ exhibition. Andy Warhol has been a long time inspiration to some of my artworks. I didn’t know much about Ai Wei Wei before, but these two guys clearly have some strong bond and connection among their artworks and identity. Both share common interest to comment on political issues, popular culture, and actually has visited each other’s residence. Andy Warhol has been in a Capitalist country, being born in America and therefore has been brought up with the free-spirited ideologies he has evidently produced in his works. On the other hand, Ai Weiwei being brought up in a Communist China made him an activist who has long inspired by Warhol’s “voice” in his works. Across their works, there is a dense number of similarities such as the use of repetition to imply mass productions, bold colours as pop aesthetics, similar drawings/sketches and etc. It is as if Ai Weiwei is an “adaptation” of Warhol just in a few decades. So I would also say that Ai WeiWei’s works are an imitation from those pop style of Andy Warhol.

 

Using Pop, Bold, Surrealistic colours:

Everywhere in our surroundings, there has to be an adaptation of the popular culture into at least one form of text. Textual crossing and adaptation does not have to be adjusted from a text into another form of medium, where text can also be adapted from cultural artefact. Needless to say, can we acknowledge that Marylin Monroe’s fashion style is adapted into the styles of celebrities we may see today? For instance, in Scarlett Johansson.