Toronto Visit

     This past Thursday was my Toronto book club and I decided to take the Friday off so I could sleep in and see the Ai Weiwei exhibit at the AGO.  We had a good discussion about the Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath, mental illness and feminism, and the food a la CC was great!  I slept in until 9 the next day, something unheard of for me, but I must have needed the rest.  I hurried off downtown, so I could get into the AGO early before the crowds.  Interestingly, there were lots of high school students at the exhibit, so it was interesting to see it through their eyes.

     Ai Weiwie designed the famous "Bird's Nest" stadium for the Beijing olympics, but distanced himself from it once he realized how poorly Chinese people were being treated by the government.  In the exhibit, he takes a lot of old and everyday objects from Chinese society and reconfigures them into something new.  The image above is a bunch of stools that have been joined together using ancient Chinese woodworking techniques to create something sculptural.  The image below is of Han dynasty vases dipped in modern, brightly coloured paints to represent the old and new of Chinese culture.

     Weiwei was very affected by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, especially as many schoolchildren were killed in shoddy "tofu" buildings.  The government refused to release actual numbers of those killed, so Weiwei went around and recorded as many as he could.  One wall of the exhibit had the names, ages, addresses etc. of as many children as he could identify - very powerful and compelling.  He also collected rebar from the sites of the earthquake and laboriously straightened it and arranged it into a landscape-like sculpture, seen below.

     After that show, I had a quick look at my favourite permanent exhibit of Henry Moore sculptures and a look at the AIMA/AGO photography finalists.  I then headed over to Chinatown, which seems to be shabbier and grimier than ever.  I also walked through Kensington Market, which had a lot of empty stores and was also looking in rough shape.  I have a feeling that those two areas are going to be the next sites of condo development/intensification, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if a fire helped that along.