Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche gives carte blanche to the Chinese star artist and it's magical! It is his first work ever created for a commercial space. By titling his exhibition “Er Xi”, which means “playground”, Ai Weiwei falls back into childhood and makes Bon Marché Rive Gauche his playground.

  • Ai Weiwei - Photo: DR
For this exhibition, Ai Weiwei was inspired by Shanhaijing, the Book of Mountains and Seas: a set of epic tales and popular legends imagined in Chinese Antiquity and told to children for more than 2000 years. Hair and feathers, faces and legs playfully combine to create a parallel world. The chimeras that roam the woods and lakes of the Middle Empire have been painted and sculpted over the centuries by peasants. Ai Weiwei chose around thirty characters, feathered dragons, for their imagination, their madness, their poetry.

“Installing the fantastic in a commercial place appeals to the imagination of customers, visitors and passers-by. We all live in parallel with this other world, that of our dreams, our fantasies, our fears. We must learn to coexist with this inseparable part of our humanism, to tame our mythology. Children can do it naturally. This exhibition is for the child in all of us! "Says Ai Weiwei.

For the creation of these mythological creatures, Ai Weiwei chose the ancestral technique of traditional kites, which combines the flexibility of bamboo with the lightness of tissue paper.

“I wanted to push the limits of this medium which is very popular in China. I contacted the best Chinese kite manufacturer, Mr. Wong Yong Xun, in Shandong province. These characters are technical prowess. At the same time, it is a very simple craft, anyone can make a kite. Says Ai Weiwei.

Er Xi's work is divided into three parts. The windows of the rue de Sèvres display myths and symbols inspired by the book of Mountains and Seas of Shanhaijing. In suspension and under the glass roofs, the mythological creatures of Ai Weiwei take shape and life in three dimensions and meet the public in complete privacy in the dedicated exhibition space on the ground floor.

Four questions to Ai Weiwei

Why did you choose Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche?

To exhibit at Bon Marché is to use a new medium, the department store, to meet another audience, as large as that of a museum, who does not seem to come for art. This experience also allows me to renew my way of designing an exhibition with different constraints from those of a museum or gallery. Exploring new potentials is an integral part of my work as an artist.

What do you like in Paris?

Parisians take the time to read everywhere, in the metro, on café terraces. Paris above all embodies literature. My father, Ai Qing, spent three years there when he was painting. He discovered. Apollinaire, Aragon, Rimbaud… Later he became a poet. In exile in the Gobi desert, he read these books to me and told us about Paris. This city is a part of my childhood.

What does Shanhaijing represent for you?

I was told the most famous tales of Shanhaijing as to all the children of the country, and whatever the political periods because it is primarily an oral culture. Shanhaijing is the China of my childhood, but also contemporary China which is a mythology that no one understands, not even me. That is why it is so fascinating.

Have you ever made a kite?

It was the first object I made when I was 10 years old. With bamboo torn at night from the window shutters because there were none in the Gobi desert where I spent my childhood. For the thread, all the children in the village stole from their mother's sewing box. We were proud. I kept this kite, it is always with me.

Find Ai Weiwei's exhibition “Er Xi, Air de jeux” at Bon Marché Rive Gauche until February 20, 2016.

Visits for adults every Thursday from 19 p.m. to 20 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. (free registration)

Visits for young audiences (children aged 6 to 11) followed by an artistic workshop every Wednesday and Saturday from 14 p.m. to 16 p.m. (on registration, price: 20 euros).

Reservations on 01 44 39 81 81.

www.lebonmarche.com