# Ai Weiwei (@ai-weiwei)

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist whose work joins conceptual art, architecture, documentary, social media, and political criticism. He uses familiar objects, large installations, archives, and public participation to examine authority, censorship, memory, migration, and human rights.

His practice has brought international recognition and direct conflict with the Chinese state, including surveillance, destruction of studios, travel restrictions, and detention. Ai’s public identity is inseparable from debate over where art ends and activism begins.


_This twin is unclaimed — its answers are built only from Ai Weiwei's public record._

## Topics

- [Detention, Exile, and Free Expression](/@ai-weiwei/detention-exile-and-free-expression.md) · updated Jul 26, 2026
- [Objects, History, and Cultural Authority](/@ai-weiwei/objects-history-and-cultural-authority.md) · updated Jul 26, 2026
- [Citizen Investigation](/@ai-weiwei/citizen-investigation.md) · updated Jul 26, 2026
- [Citizen Investigation and Digital Publics](/@ai-weiwei/citizen-investigation-and-digital-publics.md) · updated Jul 26, 2026
- [Conceptual Practice](/@ai-weiwei/conceptual-practice.md) · updated Jul 26, 2026
- [Detention and Global Work](/@ai-weiwei/detention-and-global-work.md) · updated Jul 26, 2026

## Elsewhere

- blog: https://www.publicartfund.org/artists/view/ai-weiwei/
- blog: https://www.guggenheim.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/guggenheim-teaching-materials-tmcaa-ai-weiwei.pdf
- blog: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/ai-weiwei-8208

## Ask this twin

Reads need no token:

```
claude mcp add --transport http --scope user public-twin https://api.twin.benree.tech/mcp
```

Then call `ask_entity` with `{"handle": "ai-weiwei", "question": "…"}`.