Weiwei Ai

Ai Weiwei: "Tree" (2010) made of salvaged timber. Salvaged timber became a key medium for Ai in 1994 after he returned to China. Around 2007, visiting a mountainous region in Jiangxi province, he saw people selling parts of trees by the road. Struck by lightning or downed by age, these roots, trunks, and branches were bleached nearly white by exposure to the elements. Ai amassed about 100 pieces from 100 different locations, and he exhibited them in Munich in 2009. He then began to put tree remnants together as one tree. Several different species (camphor, cedar, ginkgo) combine to make the single tree. Although it is self-evident that trees are made from wood, Ai erected a small forest all of dead trees.

June 1994 (1994)

"Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn" (1995)

"Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn" (1995), performance

"Fuck" (2000), neon sign. This word is a pun. In 2000, Ai established FAKE Design Studio in Beijing's Caochangdi arts district, registering it as or "fake" using Pinyin romanization. "Fake" is enunciated with Mandarin intonation as "fah-kuh," becoming this expletive. Like a company logo, this sign once hung in the courtyard where it amused visitors. This curse word headlined a confrontational exhibition, Fuck Off (Chinese title: Uncooperative Attitude), that Ai organized in 2000 and that was quickly shut down by the Shanghai government.

"Fuck" (2000)

"Soldier on Sentry Duty, Tiananmen Square" (1994)

"Ai Qing's Last Days at Home" (1994)

"Ai Weiwei in Tiananmen Square" (2000)

"Circle of Shoes" (1986)

"Quintessential Communist Umbrella Briefcase" (1985)

"Mao Facing Forward" (1986) and "Mao Facing Right" (1986). These works appropriate historical posters of China's Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Such posters usually carried political slogans and were often pasted on corrugated iron for broad dissemination. The stripes depict this cheap and ubiquitous building material and make the subject appear as if behind bars. These were the last paintings Ai made, saying: "It was somehow like saying goodbye to the old times."

"Hanging Man" (1985), wire clothes hanger, depicting the profile of Marcel Duchamp

"Mao 1-3 triptych" (1985), inspired by Warhol's 1972 silkscreens

"Safe Sex" (1988): a Chinese army-issue raincoat with a hole "inlaid" (in his words) with a condom suspended at crotch level. This was the titular work of Ai's first public solo exhibition, Old Shoes—Safe Sex, at a SoHo gallery, during the AIDS epidemics

"Violin Shoe" (1985).

"Dust to Dust" (2009). This work alludes to Marcel Duchamp's Air de Paris (1919), where a sealed glass vessel raises the question whether it contains anything at all. Ai's glass jars contain the remains of pulverized Neolithic ceramic objects, which have returned to dust due to destruction instigated by Ai himself. A common phrase said at funerals, the work's title implies a relationship to mortality.

"Tea Brick" (2008). This work echoes the minimalism of Donald Judd and the mathematical measures of Sol LeWitt. A block of tea leaves of the pu-er variety produced in Yunnan province of southwest China, the work applies a centuries-old process for fermenting, compressing, and molding tea leaves into bricks and patties that could be easily stored for aging and shipping to market.

"Colored Tea" (2014), ten bricks of compressed pu-er tea leaves and automotive paint. Molded with official symbols of state, such as the star representing the Chinese Communist Party, these individual bricks of tea are useful for gift-giving purposes. Over time, the bricks' value increases as the tea itself continues to ripen underneath, becoming more mellow, aromatic, and refined in flavor.

"Colored Tea" (2014)

"Buddha Feet" (2003), fragments of stone sculpture from the 6th century from Shandong province. Destruction is a key theme in Ai's art. Only the feet and the plinths below them are preserved. Many such sculptures were destroyed shortly after their creation in a tumultuous period that ended with the unification of China proper.

"Has Dynasty Vessel with Coca-Cola Logo" (2011)

"Souvenir from Beijing" (2002), seven bricks from demolished Hutong houses, inside boxes of wood salvaged from a dismantled timber structure of the Qing dynasty. Many walled-courtyard homes and the narrow lanes and alleys of traditional neighborhoods were torn down to make way for modern buildings in Chinese cities during the construction boom that began in the 1990s. By 2003, the government had evicted over half a million hutong residents from Beijing's city center.

"Table with Two Legs on the Wall" (2009), wood from the Qing Dynasty

"Grapes" (2007)

"Grapes" (2011)

Tables with Crossed Corners" (1998) and Crossed Tables (1997), tables from Qing Dynasty

Wooden Balls (2010)

"Map of China" (2004). Requiring a huge amount of labor and nearly a year to complete, this work is made of 100 pieces of wood, tightly interlocked using pressure from precise wedged-dovetail joinery, without glue or nails. The resulting shape is a map of China with Taiwan included.

"Map of China"

"Forever Bicycles" (2003), 42 bicycles. One of Marcel Duchamp's earliest readymades was Bicycle Wheel (1913): a single bicycle wheel and its fork mounted upside down on a wooden stool.

"Forever Bicycles" (2003)

"Rem(a)inders" (2008)

"Marble Chair" (2008). This sculpture, realistically carved from a single block of marble, has the form of a classical wood yokeback chair, evoking the chair that Ai's father was allowed to bring with him when he was sent into exile in 1958.

"Sunflower Seeds" (2010), one ton of unglazed porcelain. Chinese emperors ordered everyday things perfectly replicated in unusual mediums. Ai furthers the logic in his project to create porcelain sunflower seeds that appear edible. Every seed is unique even though they look identical, and all were left unglazed to look more like seed husks. One ton of the original 100,000,000+ seeds Ai commissioned for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in London is displayed here. Mao was often depicted as the Sun surrounded by citizens as sunflowers.

"Divina Proportione" (2006), 3D version of a Leonardo drawing

"Divina Proportione" (2006)

"Marble Doors" (2007)

"Marble Doors"

"Circle of Animals" (2010)

"Marble Helmet" (2010). This work refers to a coal mine collapse in which a worker was buried. Fearing he wouldn't be found in time, the man wrote a request inside his helmet: he asked his wife to raise their children by herself and to pay back a small amount of money he'd borrowed.

"81"

"81" (2013)

"Snake Ceiling" (2009)

"Forge" (2008-12)

"Forge"

"Snake Ceiling"

"Forge"

"US Mail" (2020), an unaltered found object whose significance is due to the context and location of its display: in 2020 Donald Trump questioned the role of mail-in voting in the presidential election, claiming, without evidence, widespread electoral fraud.

"Odyssey" (2017). This wallpaper depicts the arduous journeys of refugees in the heroic style of Greek vases and Egyptian carvings, based on six themes: War, Ruins, Journey, Crossing the Sea, Refugee Camps, and Demonstrations. Studying art and literature, Ai and his team hoped to identify root causes of refugee crises throughout history, including war, religious conflict, economic pressures, and environmental change.

"Odyssey" (2017)

"Odyssey"

"After the Death of Marat" (2019), toy bricks

"After the Death of Marat"

"Odyssey"

"Refugee Camp Power Supply" (2015), an object retrieved from an abandoned refugee camp at the border between Greece and Macedonia.

"A Metal Door with Bullet Holes" (2015)

"Tyre" (2016), marble

"Porcelain Pillar with Refugee Motif" (2017), stacked porcelain vases decorated with migration stories. The eight Buddhist symbols that would customarily ring the bases have been replaced by what might be described as the "Eight Needs of Refugees", including fire, a tent, good shoes, a life-buoy, and other necessities.

"Porcelain Pillar with Refugee Motif" (2017)

"The Animal that Looks like a Llama but is really an Alpaca" (2015). These decorative patterns refer concerns about the technology for surveilling and controlling access to information. Repeated graphics ; of interlocking handcuffs and surveillance cameras intertwine with Larry T Bird, the “bird” logo adopted by Twitter in 2010. This wallpaper also has imagery of the alpaca, or “grass-mud horse” (caonima), a censorship-avoiding pun and a popular meme for free speech on the internet. Obscene phrases can be made using alpacas as a central motif. This usage started with the 2009 internet phenomenon “Ten Mythical Creatures of Baidu,” whose names are all lewd puns. Shanghai residents led a “grass-mud horse” street protest in 2022 against the oppressive COVID-19 restrictions.

"The Animal that Looks like a Llama but is really an Alpaca" (2015)

"Surveillance Camera" (2010)

"The First Page of the Mueller Report" (2019), toy bricks

"After Van Gogh" (2020), toy bricks. After unusually heavy rainfall resulting from global climate change led to favorable breeding conditions, a plague of desert locusts wreaked havoc in East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Indian subcontinent in 2019. Photographs of the devastation reminded Ai of "Sower at Sunset" by Vincent van Gogh. Ai used toy bricks to reimagine the 1888 oil painting.

"Illumination" (2019). Ai was to testify in August 2009 on behalf of Sichuan earthquake activist Tan Zuoren but was violently prevented from attending the trial. As he was escorted to the elevator, Ai snapped a now-iconic selfie with his smartphone and somehow managed to post it online, where it instantly went viral. Ai recalls this pivotal moment ten years later in this work, using the pixilated quality of toy bricks to heighten the blurriness of his snapshot.

"Illumination" (2019)

"The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus in Green" (2010), toy bricks

"Scream" (2020), toy bricks

"Scream" (2020), toy bricks, depicts "The Scream" by Edvard Munch. Ai inserts an image of himself leaping in the air, naked except for an alpaca sock-puppet covering his privates. It appears as if Munch's figure is shrieking at Aiu's nakedness.

Weiwei's exhibition 2025 in Seattle

Ai Weiwei: "Water Lilies" (2022), toy bricks. Ai inserts a dark doorway into Monet's "Water Lilies", a portal into his recollection of the house where he grew up. A year after Ai's birth, his father, Ai Qing, was criminalized as a “rightist”—an antisocialist “black element” of society—and the family was exiled for two decades. At the onset of the Cultural Revolution, they were sent to “Little Siberia” near the desert of Xinjiang province in far western China. Their crude underground home of five years was intended as punishment. His father told stories of his three years in Paris and being amazed by the impressionists.

Ai Weiwei: "Water Lilies", replica of Monet

Ai Weiwei: "Water Lilies" (2022), toy bricks

"Vase inside a Vase" (2009). A blue-and-white vase is shaped inside an undecorated white one and fired in the kiln as a single work. The outer vessel completely obscures its precious “cargo,” which can be seen only from above. In 2006, Ai took up residence in Jingdezhen for a few weeks and had increasingly peculiar things—from oil spills and watermelons to scatological jokes about urine—made for him in porcelain by - artisans who accommodated every challenge.

"Vase inside a Vase" (2009)

Ai Weiwei: "Blue and White Porceilain" (1996). Ai frequently plays with concepts of what is authentic versus what is counterfeit, making use of the ability of potters at Jingdezhento make high-quality replicas. Conceived and commissioned by Ai, this porcelain replica imitates the high-shouldered baluster form of Ming- and Qing-dynasty vessels with scrolling lotus pattern. Three works on display here may resemble deliberate forgeries, but nonetheless they are unquestionably authentic Ai works.

Weiwei's Circle of Animals at LACMA at LACMA in Los Angeles

Circle of Animalsat LACMA in Los Angeles

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