Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei joined the Refugees International board in 2022. He is renowned for making strong aesthetic statements that resonate with timely phenomena across today’s geopolitical world. From architecture to installations, social media to documentaries, Mr. Weiwei uses a wide range of mediums as expressions of new ways for his audiences to examine society and its values. Recent exhibitions include: Ai Weiwei: Resetting Memories at MARCO in Monterrey, Ai Weiwei: Bare Life at the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum in St. Louis, Ai Weiwei at the K20/K21 in Dusseldorf, and Good Fences Make Good Neighbors with the Public Art Fund in New York City. 

Mr. Weiwei was born in Beijing in 1957, and his family was exiled to a labor camp in a remote province until the end of the cultural revolution in 1976 for being part of the anti-right movement. Ai Weiwei experienced life as a refugee during this time. Upon returning to Beijing, Mr. Weiwei enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy. In 1981 he embarked for New York City, where he immersed himself in the art world. He returned to China in 1993 and realized that where he once called home had changed drastically as a result of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protests and the burgeoning push for China’s increased economic development. He began to openly oppose any structures of power, domestically and abroad, using his art as a form of protest. One of his first notable pieces was a series of photographs of himself dropping a 2,000-year-old Han Dynasty urn. 

Ai Weiwei has become an advocate for refugees and displaced persons, making them the focal point of many of his most current art pieces. In 2017, Mr. Weiwei released his documentary Human Flow about the world’s refugee crisis. He is the recipient of the 2015 Ambassador of Conscience Award from Amnesty International and the 2012 Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent from the Human Rights Foundation. Mr. Weiwei now lives in Berlin.