AI WEIWEI at Washington Square Park, Doris C. Freedman Plaza and throughout New York City (through Feb. 11, 2018) A citywide public art disruption by China’s most important contemporary artist comprises large steel cages uptown and downtown, chain-link fences behind bus stops from Harlem to the Bronx, protective netting around Corona Park’s Unisphere, and hundreds of portraits of refugees on lampposts. Mr. Ai is a refugee himself — he fled to Berlin in 2015 — and by this point there is no untangling his art and his activism. His barriers and obstacles make manifest the borders rising anew in this deglobalizing age. The most shocking thing about them is how natural they appear in the cityscape, and how easily we accept yet more limits on our freedom. (Jason Farago)
Installation sites are at publicartfund.org
GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBORS
