Artist Ai Weiwei says Europe's response to refugees 'shameful, questionable'

Record ID: 102860

  • Title: Artist Ai Weiwei says Europe's response to refugees 'shameful, questionable'
  • Date: 19th May 2016
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF LARGE BLACK AND WHITE PICTURE OF CHINESE ARTIST AND ACTIVIST, AI WEIWEI, HANGING OUTSIDE MUSEUM
  • Embargoed: 3rd June 2016 16:33
  • Keywords: migrants art exhibit Chinese refugees Cycladic Weiwei sculpture statue
  • Location: ATHENS AND IDOMENI, GREECE
  • City: ATHENS AND IDOMENI, GREECE
  • Country: Greece
  • Topics: Art
  • Reuters ID: LVA0024IH6C7B
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Beneath the Greek and EU flags flying outside the Athens museum hosting Ai Weiwei's new exhibition, the Chinese artist hoisted his own on Thursday (May 19) to draw attention to what he calls Europe's "shameful" response to the refugee crisis.
    Ai's flags of Greece and Europe are coloured the metallic yellow and white of the emergency blankets aid workers hand out to newly arrived migrants to stop hypothermia. A third flag, hanging between the two, bears the outline of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed up on a Turkish beach last year.
    Ai, often described as China's most high-profile artist, dissident and political activist, has visited migrant camps in Greece to film a documentary about the refugee crisis, and has also set up a studio on Lesbos, the island where nearly a million migrants entered the European Union last year.
    Speaking ahead of the opening of his first major exhibition in Greece, Ai said he was "deeply affected" by the exodus of people and Europe's response to the crisis, which it has tried to stem by agreeing with Turkey to send undocumented migrants back, while several European states have fortified their borders.
    "I see how Europe react(s) to it, I think it's shameful, it's questionable, in many ways it's not legal and it's immoral, in many ways, and still you see the panic, the fear in the eyes of those politicians, the kind of excuse, the kind of reason they give to it is so ridiculous. Many years later, people will laugh about it, will feel shame to talk about it, just like when we talk about second war, World War II, how those migrants being treat(ed)," Ai told Reuters.
    The exhibition at Athens' Museum of Cycladic Art includes new works inspired by both the museum's archaeological collection and the refugee crisis.
    Ai has been working on a documentary about the refugee crisis since December, and has already amassed around 700 hours of footage from Lesbos, the Greek-Macedonian border, Gaza and the West Bank. He plans to visit and film in Afghanistan and Syria in the coming months.
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