MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In January 2016, the ever-provocative Chinese artist Ai Weiwei positioned himself for a photo on a Greek beach in the pose of Alan Kurdi. An image of Kurdi’s beached corpse, drowned in an attempted Mediterranean crossing, had gone viral at the time of the Syrian toddler’s death the previous fall. The response to Ai’s work was largely one of shock and derision. The artist himself argued that his appropriation of the original image was intended to give the ephemeral longevity in our quick-come-quick-go news world. Concurrently, Ai was working on an alternative statement about the migrant crisis through an installation of life vests, that is, an indexical statement—and an original one—but one lacking a human presence other than by suggestion.

This paper, the third in a series on appropriation—including a paper on re-photography offered at MAPACA in 2015—is not specifically about Ai; rather it addresses the multiple challenges Ai’s work poses as activist imagery—as appropriation, as victim photography, and as transgressive artwork. As such, this paper draws on a range of critical writings—from the seminal work of Martha Rosler on victim imaging, to the extensive considerations of constructing meaning through appropriation, to more recent work on the potential efficacy of transgressive art by such writers as Anthony Julius and Kieran Cashell. Additionally, it examines earlier instances of activist-motivated appropriations (e.g., the 1990s Benetton campaigns). In concluding it will argue that appropriation by its very nature signals an inward focus that serves to make it a powerful tool in critiquing the acts and institutions underlying image making and use, but that this same characteristic weakens the appropriated image’s efficacy in addressing the critical subject matter to which it may hope to draw our attention.