An introduction to Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei is one of the world’s most famous living artists – known for his unflinching, large-scale artworks as well as his activism and advocacy for international human rights.

For Weiwei, the roles of ‘artist’ and ‘activist’ are interchangeable. Art is always political. In 2011, Weiwei was secretly detained by Public Security in China for 81 days, exposing the power of such a principle.

Since his release, Weiwei has made a name for himself as a relentless defender of human rights, creating work that tackles the plight of refugees, state surveillance, government corruption and censorship. Now these crises take centre stage in Button Up! – a major new exhibition by Ai Weiwei, covering two centuries of trade, empire and exploitation in Chinese and British relations.

Here is all you need to know about the art world’s biggest disrupter.

Early life: exile in northern China

Ai Weiwei was born in Beijing, China, in 1957 during a fraught period of political crackdowns by the newly communist government. His father Ai Qing, one of China’s most famous poets, was exiled as part of the Anti-Rightist Campaign against intellectuals. Weiwei spent much of his childhood in exile in northwestern China, including at a military labour camp in Xinjiang.

After the death of Mao Zedong – the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party – Weiwei returned to Beijing where he studied at the Film Academy. He studied animation as part of the first class to admit students.

The United States: discovering Duchamp

In 1981, Weiwei seized a rare opportunity to leave China, taking up study in Philadelphia, California and New York. On visits to the Museum of Art, he discovered the French-American artist Marcel Duchamp, who pioneered the presentation of everyday objects or ‘readymades’ as art.

Weiwei began to question the value of cultural objects, influenced by Duchamp’s rejection of purely ‘retinal’ art – that which pleases the eye – as opposed to conceptual art informed by ideas. In 1995, he took this to the extreme when he smashed a 2000-year-old ceremonial urn in Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995). He has since turned backpacks, toy bricks, sunflower seeds and buttons into artworks.

New York inspirations

For a young artist in the 80s, moving to New York was perhaps inevitable. Soon Weiwei was immersed in the avant-garde world there. He briefly studied at Parsons School of Design under the Irish painter Sean Scully and lived in a flat with Tehching Hsieh – a Taiwanese artist known for his extreme year-long durational performances.

After discovering a book by the pop artist Andy Warhol on the shelves of Strand Bookstore, Weiwei became drawn to Warhol’s exploration of consumerism, capitalism and surveillance, often through a playful lens. In the late 80s, Weiwei exhibited at a local gallery and earned money as a portrait artist, capturing groups of tourists in Greenwich Village.

The Bird’s Nest Stadium, Remembering and Sunflower Seeds

In 1993, Ai Weiwei returned to Beijing where he began experimenting with traditional Chinese arts, collecting ancient furniture and pottery, and working as an architect. He collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron on the design of the colossal Bird’s Nest Stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which came to be seen as a symbol of China’s increasing influence on the global stage, but quickly became disillusioned with the project.

After the Sichuan Earthquake killed 87,000 people in 2008, many of whom were children, Weiwei began investigating poor construction works and state corruption. For Remembering (2009), he displayed children’s backpacks on the façade of the Haus der Kunst museum in Munich. The artwork reflects how Ai Weiwei moves between modes of artistic production and investigation.

In 2011, he exhibited one of his most famous works in the U.K. Sunflower Seeds filled the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern with 100 million sunflower seeds, which were individually crafted by skilled workers in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. The work can be considered a commentary on mass production.

81 Days: arrest and secret detainment

In 2011, after the demolishment of his Shanghai studio, Weiwei was secretly detained at Beijing airport. He was interrogated for 81 days before being released without charge. In his memoir 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, he describes the experience as a “black hole”.

After his release, Weiwei was subject to soft detention and continued surveillance. In 2013, he turned the experience into art with WeiweiCam – a live, self-surveillance broadcast, which five million people watched before the government shut it down.

In 2013, he recreated his imprisonment with an installation titled S.A.C.R.E.D featuring six scenes: (i) Supper, (ii) Accusers, (iii) Cleansing, (iv) Ritual, (v) Entropy, (vi) Doubt. Visitors peered at the mannequins through holes in the wall, taking on the voyeuristic role of the guards who watched Weiwei 24/7.

Signature style: provocative, playful and political

Ai Weiwei is a multidisciplinary artist, working across mediums including sculptural installation, filmmaking, photography, ceramics, painting, writing and social media.

Weiwei is fascinated by the abuse of power. His work is shaped by his life and the conditions he has endured. He explores the problems of borders and conflicts, as in his documentary about the plight of refugees Human Flow (2017). Often, he returns to universal symbols of humanity and community – bicycles, flowers and trees.

His work can be provocative, as in Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, and it can be playful, as in much of his work with toy bricks.

A Manchester premiere: Button Up! and Sewing a Button

In 2019, Ai Weiwei became the owner of one of the largest collections of buttons in the world when he bought the stock of button wholesaler A Brown & Co. In the button – tiny, unremarkable and in every sense a ‘readymade’ – Ai Weiwei saw the story of globalisation. Once associated with the cotton industry in the U.K. and Manchester, buttons are now mass produced in China.

The resultant artwork Eight-Nation Alliance Flags premieres as part of Button Up! – a major new exhibition by Ai Weiwei confronting 200 years of history, power and empire in Chinese-British relations.

Alongside the exhibition, Ai Weiwei re-enacts his secret detention for the first time in Sewing a Button – an unflinching 24-hour live performance.

Exhibiting exclusively in Manchester, Button Up! and Sewing a Button speak to Weiwei’s extraordinary body of work and his refusal to shy away from the great crises of our age.

Ai Weiwei: Button Up! runs from 2 July to 6 September. Book tickets here.

Sewing a Button runs from 5pm on 3 July for 24 hours. Book tickets here.