What does it mean to say that the “art world” descends on Kassel, Germany during Documenta? Rather than indicating the gathering of a unique and diverse audience, this phrase more closely refers to a coalescence of a population of homogenous art world insiders simply relocated to the same place. Ai Weiwei uprooted this dynamic with his work Fairytale (2008), which brought 1001 rural and poor Chinese people to the massive exhibition.

As David Joselit describes in After Art, this type of work is one that activates the latent power of art to affect in radical ways those limited by repressive regimes. Weiwei brings the freedom of travel promised by liberal Western democracies into a non-democratic state; however, he also sets the stage for new discourse. These Chinese tourists upended the homogeny (racial, linguistic, economic) of the “art world” in Kassel and no doubt introduced dissenting opinions/fomented new and necessary disagreements and conversations.