Artist: Ai Weiwei
Year: 2018
Medium: CNC-cut vinyl
Measurement: 17 x 48 inches
Banner 50 depicts Sigmund Freud (1856-1939, b. Pribor, Czech Republic), the founder of psychoanalysis and one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, who fled Vienna after years of working in Austria when the Nazis came to power. Fearing anti-Semitic persecution, he immigrated to London in 1938, where he remained until his death.
The original banner was on view in Manhattan on West 3rd Street between Thompson Street & LaGaurdia Place.
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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