Choosing a campaign
As corruption and government interference with the daily lives of people has become a trending topic, It caught my attention and gave me inspiration to go a political route in this project. My initial idea would be me creating anti-war propaganda posters, since it perfectly fit with the theme of government corruption as well as having a personal connection to the recent events since my country is currently at war, meaning I could utilise the passion and grief in my work to create a very thought provoking piece. To achieve that I started to look deeper into pro-war propaganda, to understand it’s effectiveness and then formulate the perfect counter of my own.
To help me, I watched a video on old propaganda below.
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After carefully considering, I realised that the best way to counter pro-war propaganda is to be able to artistically showcase the casualties and losses that it brings, and whilst researching campaigns conveying loss I have found an exhibition which completely changed the direction of this project.
Ai Weiwei
The works of this Chinese contemporary artist have already inspired me due to how open he was about criticising the Chinese government and its attitude towards its citizens, which is incredibly dangerous to do in China, but “Straight” has changed everything.
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“Straight” is an exhibition created in 2008, made to criticise the government’s incompetence and lack of compassion. The art work is made out of 150 steel rods which were recovered and straightened out by hand after the building they were holding up has collapsed during the catastrophic 2008 Sichuan earthquake which resulted in 87,587 dead, 374,643 injured and 18,392 missing. The building’s collapse has resulted in an untimely passing of over 5,000 children, which the government has claimed 0 responsibility for and refused to aknowledge. The exhibition consisted simply of the steel rods and names of the 5,000 children.
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josef (2020). Ai Weiwei: Recapturing the Tragedy and Corruption Surrounding the Sichuan Earthquake. [online] CIRCA. Available at: https://circa.art/ai-weiwei-recapturing-the-tragedy/.
“Ai had laborers straighten the rods by hand before using them to make the 90-ton floor-based installation laid out in broken ripples designed to resemble the fault lines that cause earthquakes. Ai contended that given that the schools were located on seismic fault lines, China’s government should have done a better job constructing the schools.”
Schulze, M. (2019). What is Ai Weiwei’s Straight about? [online] Publicdelivery.org. Available at: https://publicdelivery.org/ai-weiwei-straight/#the-sichuan-earthquake-90-tons-of-steel [Accessed 17 Feb. 2026].
His bravery in bringing attention to the disaster got him assaulted by the Chinese police in order to prevent him from testifying in the defence of Tan Zuoren who was creating a database in order to compile a list of all the casualties from the result of the earthquake.
Campaign analysis and direction
“Straight” featured no words, but the names of the victims and the real recovered steel were incredibly loud. As a contemporary artist it was never Ai’s intention to outwardly speak to his audience, nor was it necessary. Straight gave you all the information you need in order to make your own conclusion.
The purpose of the exhibition was to bring attention to the blatant corruption and incompetence of the government, which caused them to lower the budget on the constructions of schools in the district in order to pocket the remains, causing the deaths of nearly 90k people. This was proven to be a success since the government has harshly retaliated against him hoping to censor the impact of the disaster and specifically their involvement.
Tone can be difficult to identify in a piece with no distinct literature, but by looking at the identifiable visuals you can see that the piece is full of spite, hurt, anger and grief. The rods were specifically laid out to resemble fault lines that cause the earthquakes, reminding people that the schools were built upon those fault lines as a result of negligence by the government disregarding the civil engineering standards. Recovering the steel rods was a task filled with spite and determination, as technically he used the “murder weapons” of this tragedy in his exhibition, listing the names of the casualties whose lives were taken by these weapons right next to it. The names are a significant part of what makes this campaign as dangerous as it is, since the Chinese government has paid thousands of people to keep silent about their loss and to ensure people would forget the casualties’ names. Such a small memorial act has been recognised as an act of betrayal which resulted in Ai getting brutally assaulted and silenced, which only helps push Ai’s point across and show their government’s true vile colours which wraps all the way back around and fulfils the purpose of the campaign.
My observation
The project is very impactful as described above, and it is not in Ai’s style to make the artwork obvious. However I feel like merging the database of victims with this project would have been a highly beneficial move. There is no reason to make this project discrete, since not only was its main purpose to bring attention towards the government corruption but it also was already obvious enough to get Ai sabotaged by law enforcement. Having the names be a part of the exhibit would directly confront the audience, showing them that the victims were real breathing people who are no longer around due to blatant neglect. This would further the aggressive grieving tone that the exhibit already overwhelms you with, being unable to escape looking at the consequences and the perpetrators.