Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist. Born in Beijing in 1957, he grew up in exile in the province of Heilongjiang and the northwestern autonomous region of Xinjiang, after his father, the poet Ai Qing, was sent to a labour camp as an enemy of the revolution. After returning to Beijing, Ai attended the Beijing Film Academy from 1978 to 1981, though he found more creative and intellectual stimulation as part of a collective of avant-garde artists called Xingxing (“Stars”). Eager to escape the restrictions of Chinese society, he moved to the United States in 1981, settling in New York, where he briefly attended Parsons School of Design. In 1993, he returned to China, where he helped establish Beijing East Village, a community of experimental artists.
Ai’s practice, which encompasses architecture, conceptual art, curating, installation, performance, and photography, is driven by his social activism and is openly critical of the Chinese Government's 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 and detained for 81 days for alleged “economic crimes,” culminating in a charge of tax evasion that is widely considered to have been politically motivated. He is now recognised as a vital instigator in Chinese cultural development, an architect of Chinese modernism, and one of the nation's most vocal political commentators.
Today, he continues his global activism from his studio in Portugal, cementing his legacy as one of the most influential creative forces of our time.