Ai Weiwei and Forever Bicycles

About the
artist

Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) is an artist who currently resides and works in multiple locations, including Beijing (China), Berlin (Germany), Cambridge (UK) and Lisbon (Portugal). His father, the poet Ai Qing, was denounced by China’s Communist Party in 1958 and his family was sent to labour camps, first near the North Korean border and then eventually in Xinjiang province. They returned to Beijing in 1976 after the end of the Cultural Revolution. Ai studied animation at the Beijing Film Academy, then studied art in New York in the early 1980s. Upon returning to China a decade later, Ai advocated for experimental artists by publishing underground books and curating avant-garde exhibitions. Ai’s artworks are often ambitious in both scale and scope and engage directly with contemporary geopolitics: from global issues of human rights violations to the realities of exile and dislocation, to government corruption and the abuses of power. He is an outspoken advocate of human rights and freedom of speech. He was the recipient of the Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent in 2012 and of the Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience Award in 2015.

艾未未是一位艺术家，目前在北京（中国）、柏林（德国）、剑桥（英国）和里斯本（葡萄牙）居住和工作。他的父亲艾青是一位诗人，1958 年遭中国共产党批斗，全家先是被送往靠近朝鲜边境的劳改营，后来被流放到新疆。1976 年文化大革命结束后，他们回到北京。艾未未在北京电影学院学习动画，随后在 1980 年代初前往纽约学习艺术。十年后，艾未未回到中国，通过出版地下书籍和策划先锋派展览，为实验艺术家发声。艾未未的艺术作品通常规模宏大且涉及广泛，与当代地缘政治息息相关：从全球人权侵犯问题到流亡和流离失所的现实，再到政府腐败和权力滥用等议题。他是人权和言论自由的积极倡导者，获得了 2012 年瓦茨拉夫·哈维尔创意异议人士奖（Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent）和 2015 年国际特赦组织良心大使奖（Ambassador of Conscience Award）。