This edition of Yang Lian's poems and Ai Weiwei's visual images was realized by the publishing house Damocle Edizioni – Venice in 200 numbered copies on Fabriano Paper. The book was printed in Venice, May 2018. Every book is hand signed by Yang Lian and Ai Weiwei.

As of 2 September 2009, there were 4,851 confirmed. This video is a tribute to these perished students and a memorial for innocent lives lost.As with the discarded temple wood in Map of China or the antique stools and grapes or the Han Dynasty vases painted and occasionally destroyed in different pieces, this is old material being made new, and the faded, obscured, possibly suppressed past being made a vivid public present for conversation and for reconsideration. Ai Weiwei is one of the most significant and recognised artists working today. Known around the world for his powerful art and activism, Ai does not differentiate between disciplines: his practice glides across art, architecture, design, film, collecting and curating.

I’m a big teapot … Left Right Studio Material, an installation of fragments from porcelain sculptures destroyed when Ai’s Beijing studio was demolished. Photograph: David Levene/The GuardianAs 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. [36] He also posted his list of names of schoolchildren who died on the wall of his office at FAKE Design in Beijing. [37] While Ai undoubtedly inherited his father’s stoicism, the defiance that would characterise his later activism was all his own. It initially took the form of a blog that first appeared towards the end of 2005. The first post read: “To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is the reason.” For the Chinese authorities, who would take time to come to terms with and control the internet, this was the first of many transgressions that would lead to his blog being shut down in 2009 and to his subsequent arrest and detention in 2011. As Ai puts it himself, the blog propelled him into “the public’s field of vision with the force of a bullet from a gun”. In 2006, Ai and HHF Architects designed a private residence in upstate New York for the investor Christopher Tsai. [167] According to The New York Times, the Tsai Residence is divided into four modules and the details are "extraordinarily refined". [167] [168] In 2010, Wallpaper* magazine nominated the residence for its Wallpaper Design Awards category: Best New Private House. [169] A detached guesthouse, also designed by Ai and HHF Architects, was completed after the main house and, according to New York Magazine, looks like a "floating boomerang of rusty Cor-Ten steel". [170] Ordos 100 [ edit ]

Without me there would be no such project’ … the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing. Photograph: Wang Xinchao/AP It is a warm, clear spring morning and Ai Weiwei is giving me a tour of the huge new studio he is building about an hour’s drive from Lisbon. There is not another house in sight, just the flat green landscape of the Alentejo, and a big blue sky dotted with darting swallows. The studio, explains the artist, is a replica of his old one in Shanghai, which was finished in 2011 only to be almost immediately demolished by the Chinese authorities: officially, because it contravened planning regulations; unofficially, because of Ai’s outspoken criticism of the government. Months later, the artist was imprisoned for three months then placed under house arrest. When his passport was returned in 2015, he left the country and has not returned since. Beijing National Stadium [ edit ] The Beijing National Stadium at night during the 2008 Summer Olympics In December 2011, Ai was one of four runners-up in Time 's Person of the Year award. [211] Other awards included: Wall Street Journal Innovators Award (Art); Foreign Policy Top Global Thinkers of 2011, rank 18; the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation Award for Courage; ArtReview Power 100, rank 1; membership at the Academy of Arts, Berlin, Germany; the 2011 Time 100; the Wallpaper* 150; honorary academician at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK; and Skowhegan Medal for Multidisciplinary Art, New York City, US.

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Released in November 2021, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows is a memoir that documents the life of Ai Weiwei with a focus on his father, the renowned Chinese poet, Ai Qing. The book begins by documenting Ai Weiwei's relationship with his father and the parallels between their lives and struggles before describing Ai's success as an artist and his constant struggle with the Chinese authorities over censorship and personal freedoms. [182] Music [ edit ] Yau, John (5 September 2011). "AI WEIWEI New York Photographs 1983 – 1993". The Brooklyn Rail. Archived from the original on 18 January 2017 . Retrieved 17 January 2017. On 21 May 2015, Ai, along with the folk singer Joan Baez, received Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award, in Berlin, [218] for showing exceptional leadership in the fight for human rights, through his life and work. [219] The artist, who was at the time under surveillance and forbidden from leaving China, could not take part in the ceremony. His son Ai Lao accepted the prize on behalf of his father, called on the stage by Tate Modern director, Chris Dercon, who also spoke on behalf of the Chinese activist. [220] Chris Dercon, who received the award on behalf of Ai Weiwei, said that Ai Weiwei wanted to pay tribute to those people in worse conditions than him, including civil rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang who faces eight years in prison, imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize-winning poet Liu Xiaobo, journalist Gao Yu, women's rights activist Su Changlan, activist Liu Ping and academic Ilham Tohti. [221] Please note that while the call is free, you will be using your cell phone minutes while listening. Other Ways to Listen to This Audio Tour on Your Next AGO Visit

Despite his criticisms, he still seems to admire his home country’s growing economic strength. “China has become a headache for the west,” he says. But western paranoia over Chinese technology, such as moves by the US and EU to remove TikTok from government devices, is in his view overblown: “Those discussions are really fake. In the larger picture, in a capitalist world, competition is encouraged. But then the west meets a giant like China – whatever it creates, like Alibaba or TikTok, immediately becomes strong and powerful. I think that makes the west jealous.” Matthew Teitelbaum:: We invite you to join the conversation here at your AGO where we strongly believe in exploring ideas through the lens of art. Ai is married to artist Lu Qing. [27] He has a son, Ai Lao, born 2009 with Wang Fen. [28] Ai is fond of cats. [29] Political activity and controversies [ edit ] Internet activities [ edit ]

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. [12] His work, his life and the oppressive government reaction to both embody everything art means to us: a fearless consideration and critique of contemporary culture, a compassionate consideration of life as it is lived and the necessity of being able to stand up and speak our minds on those subjects." – Dave Berry, The National Post Ai's father was the Chinese poet Ai Qing, [3] 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. [4]