Meet The Artist
10 Artists to Follow on Instagram
8 Feb 2021
About
Placed under house arrest by the Chinese government in 2011, the country’s best-known artist is famously political. In 2010, he filled the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall with more than 100 million porcelain replica sunflower seeds, each hand-fired and painted by Chinese artisans, as a bold and beautiful statement on consumerism and mass production. His continued questioning of the motives and machinations of the state led to him being named GQ’s Artist of the Year in 2019.
Artworks
Info
Did you know?
Ai Weiwei loves cats, and has 30 of them at his Beijing studio.
Country of Birth
China
Auction Record
£3,442,500
Phillips London, 'Circle of Animals, Zodiac Heads', 2015
Notable Collections
Royal Academy, London, UK
Christopher Tsai, New York, USA
Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA
Notable Exhibitions
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, Wide public art exhibition, New York City, USA, 2017/2018
Sunflower Seeds, Tate, London, UK, 2010
Ai Weiwei News
