Through the Eyes of an Outsider

Most don’t like to admit it, but I will: I’m not a genuine Berliner. Instead, I moved here - from the provinces – just like many other capital city residents whom you frequently bump into at private viewings, exclusive parties and other secret spots around the city. There is a crucial difference between a genuine Berliner and us “newcomers”: we haven’t yet got used to the almost endless possibilities of city life.

This is why a new club in Kreuzberg or a small French restaurant can still fill us with enthusiasm. As I visited the new exhibition, „Ai Weiwei in New York - Photographs 1983-19933“ ”, at the Martin-Gropius-Bau yesterday, I noticed the same enthusiasm for the US metropolis in this artist’s images as I myself have for Berlin.

At a young age, Ai Weiwei, too, escaped the melancholy of the tiny place in which he had spent virtually his whole life up to that point and moved to the city - in his case, New York. He observed the big city through the eyes of an outsider and captured it in compelling black and white photographs.

Even the small one-room apartment in which the then unknown artist lived in the East Village is depicted in his images. At the beginning of the 1980s, gallery after gallery was opened in the neighbourhood and there wasn’t a private viewing that Ai Weiwei didn’t attend. In the ten years he spent there, he became an integral part of the New York art scene.

The images also show him in the Museum of Modern Art and in front of the infamous Pyramid Club. Rock concerts, demonstrations and outlandish fashion stores on Broadway - Ai Weiwei was always right at the heart of the action with his camera. He portrayed Allen Ginsberg, who was one of his closest friends, along with many well-known Chinese artists who visited him in the metropolis.
Like many who left their homes, Ai Weiwei never forgot his roots despite his exciting life in New York. This is why a little part of Chinese culture always resonates in his images.

Euphoria, curiosity, longing and criticism of city life unite in Ai Weiwei’s photographs. He didn’t want to miss anything, he was always there when something was happening, but his homeland was nevertheless in his thoughts. The exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau shows New York from the perspective of the Chinese artist - the perspective of a newcomer.