“Zodiac” is the graphic memoir by the Chinese artist, a meticulous work of weaving together folklore, family stories, and mythology, leaving the reader in contemplation.
by Francesca Paci for La Stampa (Italian newspaper)
“Do you know which zodiac sign best represents the power to ban books?” asks the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei to his son Lao, provocatively almost to the point of being predictable, while telling him about his childhood in the remote region of Xinjiang, where Mao Zedong had exiled his father, Ai Qing, a communist poet who remained irreducible to the Cultural Revolution. The answer has a sharp muzzle and wide ears: the sign of the power opposed to reading is the rat, “innovative people who find solutions through deception.” The next panel needs no caption: a Waste Land uninhabitable for humans but easily within reach of rodents. Thus begins, in a dialogue suspended in timeless black and white, Zodiac (Oblomov Editions), the first graphic memoir by Ai Weiwei, written by Elettra Stamboulis and illustrated by Gianluca Costantini, the gentle pencil that has been outlining the profile of international law for years, turning current events and violations into iconic faces, Joshua Wong and the rebellious umbrellas of Hong Kong, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi assassinated by the regime, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Egyptian student Patrick Zaki, Al Jazeera correspondent from the Gaza Strip Ismail al Ghoul, Masha Mini, Ahou Daryaei, and the thousands of Iranian women who relentlessly continue to challenge the Islamic theocracy.
In a dialectic of flashbacks and visions, Ai Weiwei’s life becomes, within the frames of the memoir, an agile map of the relationship between the individual and power—mirrors and reflections, the ultimate archetype of defiance against the heavens.
Through a narrative of stylized images resembling quickly jotted notes, Zodiac explores astrology, politics, freedom, and injustice, weaving together countless small human stories and the larger, terrible one that methodically dismantles their fragile certainties. The twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac, paired with human traits, serve as a pretext—taken literally as the semantic universe preceding the text—to stretch the narrative thread of the short century and close it in a circular, Eastern manner: everything returns, rather than flowing forward as per the more familiar Greek mantra, panta rei.
The rat, an animal linked to politics and war, whose blind hunger for victory emerges in contrast with its free alter ego (“the cat can open doors but doesn’t close them behind itself”), is followed by the ox, the sign of devotion. For Ai Weiwei, it automatically evokes the struggle to remain true to himself during the 81 days of imprisonment imposed by Beijing authorities (“I feared nothing but losing my conscience, compassion, and the freedom to be critical”). It was 2011; the Mediterranean resonated with the liberating cry of the Arab Spring, soon to wither, while London’s Tate Gallery had just hosted his installation Sunflower Seeds—thousands of porcelain seeds, unique and fragile like humanity, scattered across the Turbine Hall floor and handcrafted by countless Chinese artisans engaged by Weiwei, unaware of their participation in a collective project.
If the text accompanying the stylized figures feels light, its specific gravity is leaden. There is the horse, the sign of freedom, symbolized by broken reins that remain suspended, a latent dominion, as in the hands of the Charioteer of Delphi. There is the dragon, personal liberty capable of soaring like the kite discovered at a flea market in old Beijing, a relic of the past “destroyed by tanks.” There is the tiger, rebellion within the zodiac’s morphology, the self that refuses to lower its gaze before the shadowy figures of regime oppressors: the prisoner is hooded, but the true blindness lies with his captors.
The story Ai Weiwei tells his son Lao, seeking answers for him that he could not ask his own father, intertwines here with the narrative of dissident intellectual Liu Xiaobo. Hero of Tiananmen and author of the Charter 08 manifesto, Liu was arrested, sentenced to 11 years in prison, and later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, to Beijing’s great dismay. Xiaobo’s testament, before succumbing to cancer in 2017, was poetry, art, and the written word—the only resistance tyrants fear because it is “the only possible defiance.”
Zodiac is a meticulous tapestry, which, like the precious carpets of ancient China, weaves together traditional folklore, family histories, and the apotropaic symbols of mythology, leaving the reader in a kind of astrological contemplation while simultaneously creating discomfort. “Where there is power, there is danger,” Ai Weiwei repeats to his son, his wife, and his gallerist. A warning, an alarm. The past is present, like myth within history. The snake hides but does not die, his mother suggests as she recalls Mao (born under the snake sign) launching the Hundred Flowers Campaign and subsequently exiling her husband—a former friend and comrade—to Dongbei and Xinjiang, where he lived with dignity, cleaning public toilets, because “a man is what he does every day.”
And beyond the deceitful rat, the rebellious tiger, the kite-like dragon, and the lurking snake, there is the mission Ai Weiwei has assigned himself—a zodiac sign all his own—art as the link between freedom of expression and the time we are given to live. “Provoke, or succumb to apathy,” seems to be his mantra. Every battle inspires a work: Fairy Tale, where in 2007 he brought 1,001 Chinese citizens to their first trip abroad for Kassel Documenta; the hundred sheep statues accessorized with gas masks and oxygen tanks in the Beijing installation Ship Alliance; or Law of the Journey, the monumental inflatable raft carrying 258 refugee mannequins, exhibited at Prague’s National Gallery in 2017.
These political manifestos, sometimes leaning into rhetoric, do not aspire to permanence but aim to cause as much noise as a viral post amplified by millions of followers. Stripped down to the monochromatic panels of Zodiac, however, they gain depth and leave a mark.
The moral is framed in the final panel, a sly, irreverent grin from Ai Weiwei, hinting at a sequel to the book, almost like a middle finger. “Art is like a cat; it doesn’t matter if it’s black or white, as long as it catches mice.”
