Ai Weiwei

Making Sense (solo show)
The Design Museum, London
7 April – 30 July 2023

Image courtesy © Ai Weiwei Studio
Image courtesy © Ai Weiwei Studio

Ai Weiwei’s first exhibition focusing on design will mix recent works with commissioned pieces, inviting visitors into a meditation on value and humanity, art and activism. This major exhibition at London’s Design Museum, developed in collaboration with the artist, will be the first to present his work as a commentary on design and what it reveals about our changing values. Drawing from material culture, historical Chinese artefacts, and the more recent history of demolition and urban development in China, Ai explores the tension between past and present, hand and machine, construction and destruction. The exhibition will include a number of site-specific installations, comprising hundreds of thousands of objects collected by the artist in the past year, from LEGO bricks to neolithic stone tools. The artist’s largest ever work made out of LEGO will also be on display.

Chief curator at the Design Museum Justin McGuirk expands: ‘[The show includes] things we think of as worthless in ordinary times, something as worthless as a toilet roll, which during the pandemic suddenly became precious… that for him was a real signal of how objects can gain and lose value depending on the context of our times [...] we are not presenting Ai Weiwei as a designer and architect... [but] using his work and his thinking to reflect on design and architecture.’

Image courtesy © Ai Weiwei Studio
Image courtesy © Ai Weiwei Studio

Additional:

Ai Weiwei, Edmund de Waal et al.

Underneath Everything: Humility and Grandeur in Contemporary Ceramics (group show)
Des Moines Art Center
3 June – 10 September 2023

Ai Weiwei, Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds), 2008, Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from the Edmundson Art Foundation, Inc., 2012
Ai Weiwei, Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds), 2008, Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from the Edmundson Art Foundation, Inc., 2012

Edmund de Waal’s to begin again, 2015, and Ai Weiwei’s Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds), 2009, will be included in an exhibition on contemporary ceramics at Des Moines Art Center, Iowa. 

Ai Weiwei, Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds), 2008, Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from the Edmundson Art Foundation, Inc., 2012
Ai Weiwei, Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds), 2008, Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections; Purchased with funds from the Edmundson Art Foundation, Inc., 2012

Ai Weiwei, Edmund de Waal, Ai Weiwei, Thomas Struth et al.

Trace – Formations of Likeness: Photography and Video from The Walther Collection (group show)
Haus der Kunst, Munich
14 April – 23 July 2023

Installation view, Trace – Formations of Likeness: Photography and Video from The Walther Collection, Haus der Kunst, 2023, photo: Maximilian Reuter
Installation view, Trace – Formations of Likeness: Photography and Video from The Walther Collection, Haus der Kunst, 2023, photo: Maximilian Reuter

Works by Ai Weiwei and Thomas Struth are on view at Haus der Kunst, Munich, in Trace - Formations of Likeness. The major survey is in collaboration with The Walther Collection and presents more than 1000 works by a diverse group of artists from different cultural backgrounds, offering a global context to reflect on the divergent trajectories of photography today. Collectively, they showcase the medium’s capacity as both an instrument for empowerment and formation of the self, as well as its complex uses as a tool for control and subjugation.

Haus der Kunst

Installation view, Trace – Formations of Likeness: Photography and Video from The Walther Collection, Haus der Kunst, 2023, photo: Maximilian Reuter
Installation view, Trace – Formations of Likeness: Photography and Video from The Walther Collection, Haus der Kunst, 2023, photo: Maximilian Reuter

Ai Weiwei

A Conversation with Ai Weiwei (talk)
SQUARE, University of St. Gallen
30 January 2023, 7–8:30 pm (CET)

Photo: Ai Weiwei, image courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio
Photo: Ai Weiwei, image courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio

On Monday, 30 January 2023, the organisation SQUARE will host an in conversation event with Ai Weiwei alongside art market expert Laura Noll and Square director Philippe Narval to discuss his his thought-provoking, socially conscious artwork, and provide insight into his ideas on how art and activism can shape politics and business.Following the discussion attendees will have the opportunity to meet with and speak to Ai Weiwei.

Learn more

Photo: Ai Weiwei, image courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio
Photo: Ai Weiwei, image courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio

Ai Weiwei

Ego vici mvndvm (installation)
Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
14 January – 18 June 2023

Ai Weiwei, Untitled (Saint George slaying the dragon), 2023, courtesy of the artist
Ai Weiwei, Untitled (Saint George slaying the dragon), 2023, courtesy of the artist

Ai Weiwei’s new LEGO work, Untitled (Saint George slaying the dragon), is now on view in the Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. Commissioned for the altar of the Benedictine cloister’s conclave chapel, the project reimagines Vittore Carpaccio’s renowned sixteenth century altarpiece Saint George Killing the Dragon, which is usually housed in the chapel but is out on loan until June 2023. Constructed entirely of LEGO bricks, Ai Weiwei’s replacement communicates with the historical and spiritual context in which it is temporarily inserted, drawing a dialogue between the Benedictine tradition and contemporary art. 

The project takes as its title a quote from the Gospel of John inscribed along the frieze of the Chapel: Ego vici mvndvm (In this world you have troubles, but take heart: I have overcome the world!) 16,33. The artist thus establishes a link with the biblical episode represented, a paradigm of a definitive victory of Good over Evil, which can also be considered as an emblem of political and social activism in defence of human rights – a central tenet of the artist’s practice.

Ai Weiwei, Untitled (Saint George slaying the dragon), 2023, courtesy of the artist
Ai Weiwei, Untitled (Saint George slaying the dragon), 2023, courtesy of the artist

Ai Weiwei, Edmund de Waal, Ai Weiwei, Thomas Struth, Ai Weiwei, Richard Prince

From Here, For Now (group show)
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
5 November 2022 – 12 February 2023

Richard Prince, Untitled (cowboy), 1980–89, photo courtesy of Art Gallery of New South Wales, Richard Prince, © Richard Prince
Richard Prince, Untitled (cowboy), 1980–89, photo courtesy of Art Gallery of New South Wales, Richard Prince, © Richard Prince

From Here, For Now presents works by Australian and international artists from the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, exploring interrelated themes that are relevant to our current moment. Connecting Australia’s outback as a signifier of national identity with American stereotypes of outsiders, and hidden histories, the exhibition touches on selfhood, the human body, and questions of political urgency. 

Art Gallery of NSW

Richard Prince, Untitled (cowboy), 1980–89, photo courtesy of Art Gallery of New South Wales, Richard Prince, © Richard Prince
Richard Prince, Untitled (cowboy), 1980–89, photo courtesy of Art Gallery of New South Wales, Richard Prince, © Richard Prince

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei receives the Praemium Imperiale Prize

Photo: Ai Weiwei, image courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio
Photo: Ai Weiwei, image courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio

We congratulate Ai Weiwei on being awarded the Praemium Imperiale Prize 2022 by the Japan Art Association.

Praemium Imperiale Prize

Photo: Ai Weiwei, image courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio
Photo: Ai Weiwei, image courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio

Ai Weiwei

La Commedia Umana – Memento Mori (solo show)
Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
28 August – 27 November 2022

Image: Ai Weiwei, La Commedia Umana - Memento Mori, 2022. © Ai Weiwei, photo courtesy of Francesco Allegretto and Berengo Studio, Venice.
Image: Ai Weiwei, La Commedia Umana - Memento Mori, 2022. © Ai Weiwei, photo courtesy of Francesco Allegretto and Berengo Studio, Venice.

In collaboration with the Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore – Benedicti Claustra Onlus, Berengo Studio and Fondazione Berengo, Ai Weiwei will present an array of never before seen glass sculptures as part of a new solo exhibition at the Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. Alongside the presentation of works in porcelain, wood, and LEGO, the centrepiece of the exhibition is La Commedia Umana, an enormous hanging sculpture comprised of over 2,000 pieces of black glass handcrafted by the maestros of Berengo Studio in Murano. Measuring more than six metres wide and almost nine metres high, the twisted monument is the largest hanging sculpture ever made in Murano glass in living history. The work is an ‘attempt to talk about death in order to celebrate life’, the artist explains.

Berengo

Image: Ai Weiwei, La Commedia Umana - Memento Mori, 2022. © Ai Weiwei, photo courtesy of Francesco Allegretto and Berengo Studio, Venice.
Image: Ai Weiwei, La Commedia Umana - Memento Mori, 2022. © Ai Weiwei, photo courtesy of Francesco Allegretto and Berengo Studio, Venice.

Ai Weiwei

Arc, 2017, installed in Stockholm in collaboration with Brilliant Minds (temporary installation)

Ai Weiwei, Arch, 2017, installation view: Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2022, courtesy of Brilliant Minds and Michael Campanella
Ai Weiwei, Arch, 2017, installation view: Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2022, courtesy of Brilliant Minds and Michael Campanella

Ai Weiwei's iconic Arch, 2017, has been installed outside the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm as part of the Brilliant Minds foundation’s public art series in the Swedish capital. The monumental, 40ft tall cage sculpture was first shown in Washington Square Park, New York in 2017. 

Ai Weiwei additionally features among the speakers at the annual Brilliant Minds forum later this year. 

Brilliant Minds

Ai Weiwei, Arch, 2017, installation view: Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2022, courtesy of Brilliant Minds and Michael Campanella
Ai Weiwei, Arch, 2017, installation view: Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2022, courtesy of Brilliant Minds and Michael Campanella