Artist: Ai Weiwei
Year: 2018
Medium: CNC-cut vinyl
Measurement: 17 x 48 inches
Ai Weiwei created Banner 2 from a suite of images by Augustus Sherman, an amateur photographer and Bureau of Immigration clerk at Ellis Island, taken between 1905 and 1914. Sherman was interested in the diverse origins of the individuals he processed, so he took it upon himself to make photographic portraits of them. He used a large box camera with long exposures to document these recently arrived immigrants to the United States' main port of immigration at the time, which processed nearly 12 million newcomers between 1892 and1954.
The original banner was on view in Manhattan at East 56th Street between 5th & Madison Avenues, outside of Trump Tower.
From October 2017 to February 2018, Public Art Fund presented Ai Weiwei's Good Fences Make Good Neighbors in all five boroughs of New York City. Inspired by the international migration crisis and current global geopolitical landscape, the exhibition transformed the security fence into a powerful social and artistic symbol. With over 300 artworks, the interventions grew out of the existing urban infrastructure, using the fabric of the city as its base and drawing attention to the role of the fence in dividing people. The exhibition included 200 individually numbered portraits of immigrants and refugees, from the nineteenth century to today, installed on lampposts across the city. Ai transformed these vinyl banners, traditionally used for advertising, into captivating works of art. He adapted historic photographs from Ellis Island, images of famous refugees, and his own contemporary portraits taken with his studio on their global travels to 40 refugee camps. Rather than printing them like conventional banner ads, each image was laser cut from industrial black vinyl, using the negative space to create a bold, two-sided image.
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