AI WEIWEI

b.1957, Beijing, China

Currently lives and works in Portugal

 

Born in 1957 in Beijing, Ai Weiwei attended the Beijing Film Academy for Animation (1978-81) and later continued his studies at Parsons School of Design in New York. He now lives and works in both Berlin and Beijing. As one of the world’s most critical artists, Ai Weiwei is renowned for making strong aesthetic statements that resonate with timely phenomena across today’s geopolitical world. From architecture to installations, social media to documentaries, Ai uses a wide range of mediums to express new ways for his audiences to examine society and its values with global awareness.

 

Ai Weiwei endeavors not just to spread Chinese culture across the globe, but to appropriate them for the expression of thought-provoking, reflective ideas. A porcelain vase can be elegant, but it can also be a façade for the feudalistic tradition of treasury and court culture; a zodiac sign can be mythical and imbued with symbolism and faith, but it can also be down-to-earth and playful as presented by Ai, using the plastic construction toy Lego as a medium.

 

Selected solo exhibitions include “Ai Weiwei – Water Lilies #1,” Ordrupgaard Museum, Copenhagen (Denmark, 2024) “Neither Nor,” Galleria Continua, Tuscany (Italy, 2024); “Ai Weiwei: Paradigm,” Galeria São Roque Too, Lisbon, (Portugal,2024); “Ai Weiwei Solo Exhibition,” Tang Contemporary Art, Seoul, (Korea,2023); “In Search of Humanity,” Albertina Modern, Vienna (Austria, 2022); “Liberty of Doubt,” Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge (UK, 2022); “Intertwine,” Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal, 2021; “Defend the Future,” the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea (MMCA), Seoul (Korea, 2021); “Rapture,” Cordoaria Nacional, Lisbon (Portugal, 2021); “Ai Weiwei: Trace, Skirball Cultural Center,” Los Angeles (USA, 2021); “Year of the Rat,” Tang Contemporary Art, Bangkok (Thailand, 2020), “RAIZ” OCA exhibition space, Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo; Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janiero (Brazil, 2019) etc.

 

A global citizen, artist, and thinker, Ai Weiwei moves between modes of production and investigation, subject to the direction and outcome of his research. Among numerous awards and honors, he won the Lifetime Achievement award from the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards in 2008 and was made Honorary Academician at the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 2011. His human rights work has been recognized through the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent in 2012 and Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award in 2015. His largest exhibition to date “RAIZ” is also the highest-ranking show by a single artist in The Art Newspaper visitor figures survey for 2019.