Artist

Ai Weiwei

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.