Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist. Ai grew up in the far northwest of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been openly critical of the Chinese government and its stance on democracy and human rights. He investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of "tofu-dreg schools" in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In April 2011, Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing Capital International Airport for "economic crimes", and detained for 81 days without charge. Ai Weiwei emerged as a figure in Chinese cultural development, an architect of Chinese modernism, and a prominent political commentator.
Ai Weiwei encapsulates political conviction and poetry in his many sculptures, photographs, and public works. Since being allowed to leave China in 2015, he has lived in Portugal, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
Life
Early life and work
Ai's father was the Chinese poet Ai Qing, who was denounced during the Anti-Rightist Movement. In 1958, the family was sent to a labour camp in Beidahuang, Heilongjiang, when Ai was one year old. They were subsequently exiled to Shihezi, Xinjiang, in 1961, where they lived for 16 years. Upon Mao Zedong's death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, the family returned to Beijing in 1976.Weiwei notes this exile as "the whirlpool that swallowed up my father upended my life too, leaving a mark on me that I carry to this day."
In 1978, Ai enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy and studied animation. In 1978, he was one of the founders of the early avant garde art group the "Stars", together with Ma Desheng, Wang Keping, Mao Lizi, Huang Rui, Li Shuang, Ah Cheng and Qu Leilei. The group disbanded in 1983, yet Ai participated in regular Stars group shows, The Stars: Ten Years, 1989, and a retrospective exhibition in Beijing in 2007: Origin Point.
Life in the United States
From 1981 to 1993, he lived in the United States. He was among the first generation of students to study abroad following China's reform in 1980, being one of the 161 students to take the TOEFL in 1981. For the first few years, Ai lived in Philadelphia and San Francisco. He studied English at the University of Pennsylvania and the Berkeley Adult School. Later, he moved to New York City. He studied briefly at Parsons School of Design. Ai attended the Art Students League of New York from 1983 to 1986, where he studied with Bruce Dorfman, Knox Martin and Richard Pousette-Dart. He later dropped out of school and made a living out of drawing street portraits and working odd jobs. During this period, he gained exposure to the works of Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Jasper Johns, and began creating conceptual art by altering readymade objects.Ai befriended beat poet Allen Ginsberg while living in New York, following a chance meeting at a poetry reading where Ginsberg read out several poems about China. Ginsberg had traveled to China and met with Ai's father, the noted poet Ai Qing, and consequently Ginsberg and Ai became friends.
When he was living in the East Village, Ai carried a camera with him all the time and would take pictures of his surroundings wherever he was. The resulting collection of photos were later selected and is now known as the New York Photographs. At the same time, Ai became fascinated by blackjack card games and frequented Atlantic City casinos. He is still regarded in gambling circles as a top tier professional blackjack player according to an article published on blackjackchamp.com.
Return to China
In 1993, Ai returned to China after his father became ill. He helped establish the experimental artists' Beijing East Village and co-published a series of three books about this new generation of artists with Chinese curator Feng Boyi: Black Cover Book, White Cover Book, and Gray Cover Book.In 1999, Ai moved to Caochangdi, in the northeast of Beijing, and built a studio house—his first architectural project. Due to his interest in architecture, he founded the architecture studio FAKE Design, in 2003. In 2000, he co-curated the art exhibition Fuck Off with curator Feng Boyi in Shanghai, China.
Life in Europe
In 2011, Ai was arrested in China on charges of tax evasion, jailed for 81 days, and then released. The government had confiscated his passport and refused him any other travel papers. Following the return of his passport in 2015, Ai moved to Berlin where he maintained a large studio in a former brewery. He lived in the studio and used it as the base for his international work.In 2019, he announced he would be leaving Berlin, saying that Germany is not an open culture. In September 2019, he moved to live in Cambridge, England.
File:Ai WeiWei Divina Proportione.jpg|thumb|Ai WeiWei's Divina Proportione, Hamilton Princess & Beach Club, Hamilton, Bermuda
As of 2023, Ai lives in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal. He still maintains a base in Cambridge, where his son attends school, and a studio in Berlin. Ai says he will stay in Portugal long-term "unless something happens". He briefly travelled to China in late 2025-early 2026 to visit his mother.
Ai sits on the Board of Advisors for the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong.
Personal life
Ai is married to artist Lu Qing. He has a son, Ai Lao, born in 2009 with filmmaker Wang Fen. Ai is fond of cats.Political activity and controversies
Internet activities
In 2005, Ai was invited to start blogging by Sina Weibo, the biggest internet platform in China. He posted his first blog on 19 November. For four years, he "turned out a steady stream of scathing social commentary, criticism of government policy, thoughts on art and architecture, and autobiographical writings." The blog was shut down by Sina on 28 May 2009. Ai then turned to Twitter and wrote prolifically on the platform, claiming at least eight hours online every day. He wrote almost exclusively in Chinese using the account @aiww. As of 31 December 2013, Ai has declared that he would stop tweeting but the account remains active in forms of retweets and Instagram posts. In 2013, Dale Eisinger of Complex ranked Ai's blog as the fourth greatest work of performance art ever, with the writer arguing, "Much in the way early performance artists documented with film and video, Ai used the prevalent medium of his time—the web—to examine the increasingly fine line between public life and the artist's work. Ai here used his presence to create something full and tangible rather than just a symbolic representation of his critique." In 2023, he created a mobile app to which gives users a picture of Ai's own middle finger which they can insert over another image of any place on earth which they disapprove of.Citizens' investigation on Sichuan earthquake student casualties
Ten days after the 8.0-magnitude earthquake in Sichuan province on 12 May 2008, Ai led a team to survey and film the post-quake conditions in various disaster zones. In response to the government's lack of transparency in revealing names of students who perished in the earthquake due to substandard school campus constructions, Ai recruited volunteers online and launched a "Citizens' Investigation" to compile names and information of the student victims. On 20 March 2009, he posted a blog titled "Citizens' Investigation" and wrote: "To remember the departed, to show concern for life, to take responsibility, and for the potential happiness of the survivors, we are initiating a 'Citizens' Investigation.' We will seek out the names of each departed child, and we will remember them."As of 14 April 2009, the list had accumulated 5,385 names. Ai published the collected names as well as numerous articles documenting the investigation on his blog which was shut down by Chinese authorities in May 2009. He also posted his list of names of schoolchildren who died on the wall of his office at FAKE Design in Beijing.
Ai suffered headaches and claimed he had difficulty concentrating on his work since returning from Chengdu in August 2009, where he was beaten by the police for trying to testify for Tan Zuoren, a fellow investigator of the shoddy construction and student casualties in the earthquake. On 14 September 2009, Ai was diagnosed to be suffering internal bleeding in a hospital in Munich, Germany, and the doctor arranged for emergency brain surgery. The cerebral hemorrhage is believed to be linked to the police attack.
According to the Financial Times, in an attempt to force Ai to leave the country, two accounts used by him had been hacked in a sophisticated attack on Google in China dubbed Operation Aurora, their contents read and copied; his bank accounts were investigated by state security agents who claimed he was under investigation for "unspecified suspected crimes".
Shanghai studio controversy
Ai was placed under house arrest in November 2010 by the Chinese police. He said this was to prevent the planned party marking the demolition of his brand new Shanghai studio.The building was designed by Ai himself with assistance, and potency coming from a "high official " the new studio was a part of a new traditionally design by Shanghai Municipal jurisdiction. He was going to use it as a studio and mentor different architecture courses. After Ai was charged with constructing the studio without the required approval and the knockdown notice had been processed, Ai said officials had been anxious and the paperwork and planning process was "under government supervision". According to Ai, a few different artists were invited to create and structure new studios in this area of Shanghai because officials wanted to create a friendly environment.
Ai stated on 3 November 2010 that authorities had let him know two months earlier that the newly completed studio would be knocked down because it was illegal and did not meet the needs. Ai criticized that this was biased, stating that he was "the only one singled out to have my studio destroyed". The Guardian reported Ai saying Shanghai municipal authorities were "upset " by documentaries on subjects they considered delicate—in particular a documentary featuring Shanghai resident Feng Zhenghu, who lived in forced separation for three months in Narita Airport, Tokyo, and one focused on Yang Jia, who murdered six Shanghai police officers.
At the end of the term, the gathering took place without Ai. All of his fans had a river crab, an allusion to "harmony", and a euphemism used to jeer official censorship. Ai was eventually released from house arrest the next day.
Like other activists and intellectuals, Ai was stopped from leaving China in late 2010. Ai suggested that the higher ups wanted to stop him from attending a ceremony in December 2010 to award the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to fellow dissident Liu Xiaobo. Ai said that he was never invited to the ceremony and was attempting to travel to South Korea where he had an important meeting when he was told that he could not leave for reasons of national security.
On 11 January 2011, Ai's studio was knocked down and destroyed in a surprise move by the government, who had previously told him the studio would be destroyed only after the beginning of the New Year on 3 February 2011.