Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, and Ai Weiwei “Hansel & Gretel”

Park Avenue Armory

This event has ended.

“[Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron] are always dedicated to enlarging experience where others would flatten it, and heightening the specifics of a place when there are pressures to erase them.
They are champions of nuance.”
— Architectural Review

“…it is the essence of Ai’s activism:
…work that unleashes the political power of art.” — The Guardian (UK)

Pritzker Prize-winning architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and artist/activist Ai Weiwei explore the meaning of public space in our surveillance-laden world, referencing the story of Hansel and Gretel in which the children lose their way and feel a sense of menace in a space they know and trust. The artists take advantage of the vast openness of the Drill Hall, creating a 21st century public place in which the environment is disconcerting, the entrance is unexpected, and every movement is tracked and surveyed by drones and communicated to an unknown public.

The work builds on the artists’ shared practice as designers of form and investigation (the Beijing Olympic Stadium and “quite simply the best summer Serpentine Pavilion ever” according to Time Out London) and their deep interest in the public realm whether through activism or architecture. Ai Weiwei has described their collaborations as follows: “My experience of working with Jacques and Pierre is that we never think separately. It’s like three soldiers in the war—and that’s a good feeling: we have a constant understanding.”

Curated by Tom Eccles and Hans Ulrich Obrist