Ai Weiwei: Button Up! – Learning Resources

Explore our resources for educators, families and young people who are visiting Ai Weiwei: Button Up!

Ai Weiwei stood with arms folded wearing a black t-shirt, in front of a giant flag made of buttons Ai Weiwei stood with arms folded wearing a black t-shirt, in front of a giant flag made of buttons

About

Button Up! is a major new exhibition at Aviva Studios this summer by the world-leading artist and activist Ai Weiwei.

Explore our learning resources here – designed by the Creative Learning team at Factory International.

Exhibition resources

These tools are designed as an accompaniment for families and young people visiting Button Up!

Download here or pick up a physical copy in the Social during your visit.

Document List

Online teaching resource

This tool has been created as a companion for teachers. With this tool you will be able to find the information you need to learn, teach and discuss the themes of Ai Weiwei's exhibition Button Up! with your class.

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The exhibition

Internationally renowned artist and activist Ai Weiwei turns his critical gaze to the last 200 years of global history with this major new exhibition. Monumental in scale and ambition, Ai Weiwei: Button Up! is the artist’s most expansive presentation in the North to date.

In Button Up!, the artist turns his lens on two centuries of Chinese and British relations. Taking inspiration from Manchester, a city at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, Button Up! explores how historic systems of trade, empire and exploitation resonate in today’s humanitarian and political crises.

The artist

Ai Weiwei is known around the world for his uncompromising artistic vision and political activism. From a childhood in exile to surviving secret detention in China, his remarkable life and career have led him to global prominence. Using sculpture, installation, film, photography and architecture, his work is unafraid to ask urgent, critical questions.

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