Past and Present Bridge

 

Ai Weiwei’s “With wind” is composed of dragon kites in confined spaces. In 2014, the artist placed them in the former prison of Alcatraz. The kites, instrument of ancient military Chinese techniques, were a symbol of one of the world’s largest empires. In this piece, they become a synonym of freedom.

 

The lyrics for the song “1944” concern the deportation of the Crimean Tatars at the hands of Joseph Stalin. The song was the winner of the 2016 Eurovision contest. The writer was inspired by the story of her great-grandmother who was in her mid-20s when she and her five children, accused of collaborating with the Nazis, were put on a train with no food or water and, along with her entire community, were deported to Central Asia. One of her daughters did not survive the journey. A poetic rendition on the loss of liberty,”1944” in the context of a Crimea once again occupied by Russia, becomes a song of freedom.

 

Jamala and Ai both produce works that rekindle past conflicts, pain, and heritage. Both artists work with memory to process and relieve traumas, bringing their reflections into other contexts. Their art consists of building bridges between situations separated by time and space. Bringing urgency to events by pointing their similarities to others. In Bridges, I attempt to mimic that same action, by pointing to similarities between the two artworks. Ai and Jamala meet as architects of bonds between past and present.

 

Delicate and fearsome, the traditional Chinese dragon kite embodies a mythical symbol of power. Ai’s studio collaborated with Chinese artisans to produce the handmade kites – a process that is slowly disappearing in modern China. The individual kites that made up the dragon’s body carried quotations from activists who have been imprisoned or exiled, including Nelson Mandela, Edward Snowden, and Ai himself. The artist maintained a traditional way of producing art but re-signified who it represents, making it a sign to and by those oppressed by the state, instead of a symbol of the state itself.

 

Scattered around the room were other kites decorated with stylized renderings of birds and flowers. Many of the icons depicted are from nations with records of restricting their citizens’ human rights and civil liberties. When he chose to show it in one of the most famous sites of imprisonment in the Western World, Ai Weiwei deepens the kites’ meaning. The place and time combine past and current crisis, bringing new layers to both by engulfing them in the same universe. On one side, the Chinese authoritarianism, and on the other, the American tradition of massively imprisoning non-white humans in jails just like Alcatraz.

 

Ai Weiwei was a political prisoner to the authoritarian Chinese government. His pain is placed inside a kite – a symbol of both freedom and state power – and said kite is placed in a prison used to hold prisoners who “continually caused trouble at other federal prisons”(Komlos, 2003). The mere placement of the kite suggests that those prisoners, mostly men of color, had confinements just as political as Ai Weiwei’s. The placing of the kite into Alcatraz in the year 2014 brings together different spaces, and times. Making the viewer walk in between freedom and restriction, creativity and repression, cultural pride and national shame.

 

Meanwhile, Jamala sings that song about her great-grandmother, combining past and present Crimean contexts through both content and style.  The song’s lyrics are half in English, half in Crimean Tatar Language. The first part, a contemporary poem sang with an electric beat underneath.

 

When strangers are coming
They come to your house
They kill you all
And say
We’re not guilty
Not guilty

 

Where is your mind?
Humanity cries
You think you are gods
But everyone dies
Don’t swallow my soul
Our souls

 

The second half of “1944” begins with a song named Ey, güzel Qırım, a chant Jamala’s great-grandmother used to sing to her. It is introduced by the soft melody of an ancient double-reed woodwind instrument made of apricot wood named duduk and it is performed using the mugham vocal style, a complex modal system used for improvisations.

 

Yaşlığıma toyalmadım (I could not spend my youth there)
Men bu yerde yaşalmadım (Because you took away my land)
Yaşlığıma toyalmadım (I could not spend my youth there)
Men bu yerde yaşalmadım (Because you took away my land)

 

There are different renditions of “1944.” One of the most touching comes from the Ukrainian franchise of the singing competition reality show “The Voice.” Elina Ivashchenko, a 14-year-old, sang Jamala’s song, moving especially the older people in the audience.

 

Watching Elina revealed another bridge between Jamala and Ai Weiwei’s work. By making use of past techniques that have almost disappeared among younger generations, they keep those crafts alive. Both artists not only present bridges between past and present, but they become the bridges themselves.

Check out Elina's performance here.