Ai Weiwei | Artist | East West Bank Art Program

Ai Weiwei is arguably China’s most globally famous contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist. His artistic practice ranges from performance, photography, sculpture, video, sculptural installations, writing and social media. Born in Beijing in 1957, Ai’s youth was defined by his father’s political exile, which undoubtedly influenced his iconoclastic approach to authority and history, as seen in his famous Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, which solidified Ai as a vital cultural figure and political commentator. Ai lived in the United States between 1981 and 1993, primarily in New York, where he very briefly attended the Parsons School of Design. Upon returning to China, he played a significant role in the 2008 Summer Olympics, designing the Beijing National Stadium (known as the "Bird's Nest"), but later he became critical of government propaganda and human rights issues. In 2011, he was secretly detained for 81 days by the Chinese government. Now living in exile, he continues to make confrontational and socially engaged art.

Ai has been featured in solo exhibitions at major museums worldwide. His artwork is in the permanent collections of, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Tate Modern Museum, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. He is the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, including the Chinese Contemporary Art Award (2008); the Skowhegan Medal (2011); Honorary Academician at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2011); and the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent (2012); Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award (2015) and Praemium Imperiale for sculpture from the Japan Art Association in Tokyo (2022). Read more