Ai Weiwei: the artist who cannot be gagged

Map of China
Map of China
COURTESY THE ARTIST

For an artist who is under a form of house arrest, Ai Weiwei certainly gets about a great deal. His passport has been confiscated. He is forbidden from travelling without permission outside the confines of Beijing.

And yet, it would seem that barely a major art event can go by without including a work by China’s most famous creative dissident. The West is clearly determined to manifest its support for the activist whose sharp critiques of his government and tireless campaigns for the freedom of expression have earned him beatings, interrogations and imprisonment.

This week, on the other side of the Atlantic, an ambitious Ai installation opens in the bleakly atmospheric setting of Alcatraz. Meanwhile, back home, offering a rather different and decidedly more elaborate