DARK SECRETS: Ai qing | Vintage Vibes

Ai Weiwei on AI: 'We are losing privacy and without it we stop being individuals'

The renegade Chinese artist and human rights activist has issued a warning about the dangers of using AI as a tool of censorship during his visit to Belgium, where he's opening a major retrospective this autumn.

Euronews · Oct 5

‘Was I scared going back to China? No’: Ai Weiwei on AI, western censorship and returning home

He has been jailed, tracked and threatened by China’s government. What was it like pay a visit home? As he publishes a polemic about surveillance and state control, the artist relives a momentous trip to see his mother

The Guardian - UK · Feb 9

Ai Weiwei on exile, censorship, AI and his Evening Standard front page design for the Chinese New Year

The legendary dissident artist tells Martin Robinson about his new Ai vs AI exhibition in Piccadilly and the chilling similarities he sees between western cancel culture and Chinese oppression. Plus: Standard readers can win a print by the artist!

Evening Standard · Feb 9, 2024

Ai Weiwei, Design Museum review: The master provocateur creates timeless beauty from historical objects

The exiled Chinese artist turns his industrial-scale collecting into sinister yet quietly moving, meditative works in Making Sense

The Independent UK · Apr 5, 2023

Ai Weiwei's largest-ever Lego artwork revealed at London’s Design Museum

At London’s Design Museum, Ai Weiwei has revealed Water Lilies #1, a new Lego recreation of Claude Monet’s iconic painting. We explore the vast new work ahead of the Chinese artist’s major show at the museum, opening on 7 April 2023

Wallpaper · Mar 20, 2023

Ai Weiwei’s Lego re-imagining of Monet’s water lilies to go on show in London

Exclusive: 15-metre-long work made up of 650,000 Lego bricks to form part of artist’s biggest UK show in eight years

The Guardian - UK · Mar 20, 2023

All those in favour say Ai

For much of his life, Ai Weiwei has fought the oppression of the Chinese Communist Party. As he signs sheets of A4 in invisible ink at Speakers’ Corner — a reference to the protests currently going on in his home country — Kate Wills heads down to meet him

Evening Standard · Dec 15, 2022

Ai Weiwei says mother, 90, warns him against China return

Artist and activist tells event in London he is not clear in own mind about whether struggles for freedom were ‘worth it’

The Guardian - UK · Sep 16, 2022

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei: Western boycott of Beijing Olympics is 'a joke'

He is the most famous Chinese dissident and one of the best-known contemporary artists in the world. Ai Weiwei was harassed by the Chinese authorities, who bulldozed his Shanghai studio, sent him to jail without charge and drove him out of his country. After the February 2 publication of the…

France 24 · Feb 15, 2022

Artist Ai Weiwei Warns of Chinese and American Authoritarianism

In 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, the renowned artist details his struggles with censorship.

Reason · Feb 8, 2022