Meeting with Elettra Stamboulis and Gian Luca Costantini
by Virginia Tonfoni for Il Manifesto (Italian newspaper)
The screenwriter Elettra Stamboulis and the artist and activist Gianluca Costantini hadn’t worked together on the same book since Il diario segreto di Pasolini (Beccogiallo 2015), but for another artist and thinker, equally inconvenient, with whom they share a commitment to the protection of human rights and freedom of expression, they return to tell a life in comics. The graphic novel is titled Zodiac, and it is dedicated to the complex and fascinating figure of the world’s most famous Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei. Released by Penguin Random House in the United States in January, it arrived in Italy under the Oblomov catalog just before being included in the New York Public Library’s list of the top ten graphic novels of the year. We spoke with the authors during the past Lucca Comics and Games.
You’ve been following Ai Weiwei’s work for a long time, and I remember you documented his lawsuit against Volkswagen in 2019. How did Zodiac come about?
Gianluca Costantini: Yes, in that case, it was Ai Weiwei who contacted us. The trial took place outside Copenhagen and journalists were banned from entering. We were already working on the book, and Ai Weiwei thought it would be a good opportunity to have us there, following the trial, which was in Danish with simultaneous translation into Chinese. This book was a commission from Studio Ai Weiwei and was mostly created during the lockdown.
Gianluca, Zodiac is drawn with a finer line compared to your usual style. Is this a reference to the taste and visual temperature of traditional Chinese art?
G.C.: Yes, it was also a request from Ai Weiwei. He’s used to my bolder, more defined portraits, probably because of their media function, since he often reposts them. The first draft of the book was drawn that way, but then he showed us examples of 20th-century Chinese drawings, Chinese cartoonists, as well as classic landscape drawings where the line thins. In the comic, there is no black shading; only line and weaving.
How did the theme of the zodiac emerge?
Elettra Stamboulis: The zodiac often appears in his work and is deeply rooted in Chinese culture. Like his people, Ai Weiwei views horoscopes and astrology as a form of science. For them, it’s real and very important. During our first meeting in Berlin when we were about to start this project, he asked Gianluca what his zodiac sign was, but he didn’t know, so he said he was a rooster. I’m also a rooster, and I felt that this connected us so much that it became a central thematic key to the narrative. The zodiac element is accompanied by legends, which mark the various chapters.
E.S.: I wasn’t passionate about the East—though I work with comics—and I didn’t know Chinese culture. While studying to write this book, I understood that, since there is no revealed religion, legends and astrology are important for understanding reality. The legends convey truths that the people adhere to; even such a westernized figure like Ai Weiwei has a view of the world deeply soaked in his own culture, where everything speaks and everything is a sign. When I understood the greatness of Chinese culture and thought, I used legend as a metanarrative element to facilitate bringing this closer to us.
The story distances itself from a simple artist biography…
E.S.: Ai Weiwei is a character who conveys the poetics of an artist and activist and his commitment to human rights. His biography is the one he wrote, which was released by Feltrinelli. I read the drafts after the comic was finished. He didn’t want me to know too many details that might distract me from the common narrative goal. Initially, the book was supposed to be a graphic essay on civil rights. But then Ai Weiwei understood that his face—which, in his opinion, Gianluca draws very well—would be important to reach a wider audience. Ai Weiwei is an opinion maker; people ask him what he thinks about the situation in Gaza, and he takes strong and decisive positions, which often affect his work in terms of cancelled exhibitions. He often says, “They expect me to be silent, like they are. But I am not them.”
Your book serves as a tribute to many Chinese artists oppressed by censorship. How did you choose the figures who appear in the book?
G.C.: They are the figures Ai Weiwei has worked with: Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who died in prison without medical care, always accompanied by his wife, who became a symbol herself. Then Ai Weiwei himself became a symbol and an aggregator for others. While working on his major work on the earthquake, he maintained contact with many activists involved in defending the earthquake survivors. Ai Weiwei is the son of Ai Qing, the most famous Chinese poet, whose poems are known by heart by children in China. This makes him a powerful figure: he’s a provocateur, and many of his acts of dissent would have sent anyone else to prison long before.
E.S.: He and Xi Jinping, for example, have a very similar history, although the latter became president while Ai Weiwei had to leave. They were both children of the first Maoist phase intellectuals of the People’s Republic, who underwent the Cultural Revolution and, once rehabilitated, gained access to studies, situations, and opportunities that others didn’t have. Ai Weiwei, despite being his father’s son, went to New York for ten years with his brother.
Did the artist follow the phases of the book’s creation?
G.C.: Yes, there was a long editing process related to language, as figurative language works differently. Metaphor in China is not so trivial. I also realize this with my students at the academy.
E.S.: The book was written in English; I thought I was very clear, but there was much revision of the text. The entire operation made me realize how much we think in cultural subtexts. Our thinking is not free but conditioned by our culture. In constructing the sequence, for example, the reader’s background context is important not to overlook. There was no censorship or cutting, but a constant mediation on the narrative mode. Beauty in China corresponds to the essential; the masterpiece in art is that landscape we perceive as somewhat anonymous, much like what happens with Chinese poetry. Yet the tastelessness, as they call it, is the ultimate goal of art: neither too spicy nor too salty.
