Artist Awash In The Land Of Refugees

On the Greek Island of Lesvos, Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei stands tall to support the refugees.

- Gayatri Jayaraman

Another child washed ashore dead yesterday. “We are all refugees of some kind,” the artist will later say. A drone hovers over the edge of the sea when the boats come in, there where the remnants of the three discarded dinghies that have successfully made the crossing since 4 am this morning lie—it’s his tell-tale signature. It is 10 am and a sunny 2 degrees in Skala Sikamineas, on the northern shore of the Greek island of Lesvos in the Aegean Sea, the mountains on the coast of Turkey visible on the horizon. The 57-year old Chinese dissident artist and India Today Art Awards’ International Spotlight 2016, Ai Weiwei, here since Christmas 2015, is standing in the spray as the fourth boat carrying refugees comes in, some already suffering stages of hypothermia. Behind him, staggered on the shore are five members of his team recording different angles with their phone cameras held with a nonchalant focus at waist level. The dissident learns to record surreptitiously, you will learn. Several refugees walk with a limp, some have to be carried out, all are at some stage of soaked-to-the-bone, yet shaking hands with the volunteers helping them out, in quiet congratulations at having found the other side. The wi-fi at camp is named ‘Better Times’. The first thing they all want to do is to message home, even before getting warm. Almost all, points out Weiwei, have children young enough to dream of a better future. He is shocked. “On some boats you find children unaccompanied, that’s crazy. When you have given your children away, that is when you have given up,” he says.