“The godfather of Chinese contemporary art”, Ai Weiwei is also an activist who has, over decades, “documented the failures and excesses” of the Chinese Communist Party, said Tim Smith-Laing in the Financial Times.He has been imprisoned, kept under house arrest and, eventually, exiled. Earlier this month, for a one-off performance piece at his new show in Manchester’s Aviva Studios, Ai re-enacted a full 24 hours of his 81-day detention inside a replica cell.
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