[4] In 1978, he was one of the founders of the early avant garde art group the "Stars", together with Ma Desheng, Wang Keping, Mao Lizi, Huang Rui, Li Shuang, Ah Cheng and Qu Leilei.

[37] Ai suffered headaches and claimed he had difficulty concentrating on his work since returning from Chengdu in August 2009, where he was beaten by the police for trying to testify for Tan Zuoren, a fellow investigator of the shoddy construction and student casualties in the earthquake.

[49] South China Morning Post reports that Ai received at least two visits from the police, the last being on 31 March—three days before his detention—apparently with offers of membership to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

[55] Michael Sheridan of The Australian suggested that Ai had offered himself to the authorities on a platter with some of his provocative art, particularly photographs of himself nude with only a toy alpaca hiding his modesty – with a caption『草泥马挡中央』 ("grass mud horse covering the middle").

"[55] Pro-Beijing newspaper in Hong Kong,[57] Wen Wei Po, announced that Ai was under arrest for tax evasion, bigamy and spreading indecent images on the internet, and vilified him with multiple instances of strong rhetoric.

On 13 April 2011, a group of European intellectuals led by Václav Havel had issued an open letter to Wen Jiabao, condemning the arrest and demanding the immediate release of Ai.

Liu Xiaoyuan, his attorney and personal friend, reported that Wei was in good physical condition and receiving treatment for his chronic diabetes and hypertension; he was not in a prison or hospital but under some form of house arrest.

J.J. Camille (the pen name of a Chinese-born writer living in New York), "neither a journalist nor an activist but simply an art lover who wanted to talk to him" had travelled to Beijing the previous September to conduct the interview and to write about his visit to "China's most famous dissident artist" for the magazine.

On 20 June, hundreds of Ai's supporters gathered outside the Chaoyang District Court in Beijing despite a small army of police officers, some of whom videotaped the crowd and led several people away.

[101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109] In one of the interviews, the CEO of the UCCA, Xue Mei, admitted that, due to the sensitive time of the exhibition, Ai's name was taken out of the press releases on the day of the opening and it was supposed to be restored afterwards.

"[114] In November 2023, Ai Weiwei's exhibition at the Lisson Gallery in London was postponed indefinitely after he tweeted about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict that "the sense of guilt around the persecution of the Jewish people has been, at times, transferred to offset the Arab world.

He criticized the suspension of two New York University professors for comments regarding Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip, saying "This is really like a cultural revolution, which is really trying to destroy anybody who have different attitudes, not even a clear opinion.

The work reveals the rhythm of Beijing as a capital city, its social structure, cityscape, socialist-planned economy, capitalist market, political power center, commercial buildings, and industrial units as pieces of a multi-layered urban collage.

In Lao Ma Ti Hua, Ai Weiwei travels to Chengdu, Sichuan to attend the trial of the civil rights advocate Tan Zuoren, as a witness.

This film is an investigation conducted by Ai Weiwei studio into the circumstances of the incident and its connection to the land dispute case, mainly based on interviews of family members, villagers and officials.

According to official statistics, in 2001 there were 850,000 AIDS sufferers in China, many of whom contracted the illness in the 1980s and 1990s as the result of a widespread plasma market operating in rural, impoverished areas and using unsafe collection methods.

The film portrays the day-to-day activity surrounding Ai Weiwei, his family and his associates ranging from consistent visits by the authorities, interviews with reporters, support and donations from fans, and court dates.

In August 2014, Ai Weiwei was invited as one of the participating artists for the Fukushima Nuclear Zone by the Japanese art coalition Chim↑Pom, as part of the project Don't Follow the Wind.

After consistent surveillance and harassment for her outspoken activism as chronicled in Nanfu Wang's documentary Hooligan Sparrow, Haiyan and her daughter were met with multiple evictions in various cities and ultimately ended up on the side of the road with all of their belongings and no place to go.

Once the exhibition in Wittenberg closed, the Stiftung Lutherhaus Eisenach endeavored to make this exceptional manifestation of contemporary Reformation commemoration, man in a cube, permanently accessible to a wide audience.

Artist Ai Weiwei has used traditional Chinese kite-making techniques to create mythological characters and creatures for windows, atriums and the gallery at Paris department store Le Bon Marché (+ slideshow).

[170] A detached guesthouse, also designed by Ai and HHF Architects, was completed after the main house and, according to New York Magazine, looks like a "floating boomerang of rusty Cor-Ten steel".

Ai was commissioned as the artistic consultant for design, collaborating with the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, for the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Summer Olympics, also known as the "Bird's Nest".

"[179] In summer 2012, Ai teamed again with Herzog & de Meuron on a "would-be archaeological site [as] a game of make-believe and fleeting memory" as the year's temporary Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London's Kensington Gardens.

[180][181] This edition of Yang Lian's poems and Ai Weiwei's visual images was realized by the publishing house Damocle Edizioni – Venice in 200 numbered copies on Fabriano Paper.

[2] On 24 October 2012, Ai went live with a cover of Gangnam Style,[184] the famous K-pop phenomenon by South Korean rapper PSY, through the posting of a four-minute long parody video on YouTube.

[190] On 15 March 2010, Ai took part in Digital Activism in China, a discussion hosted by The Paley Media Center in New York with Jack Dorsey (founder of Twitter) and Richard MacManus.

[192] Keeping Ai's source anonymous, the transcript was published by the British magazine New Statesman on 17 October 2012, offering insights on the education, life, methods and tactics used by professional trolls serving pro-government interests.

In 2017, Wolfgang Tillmans, Anish Kapoor and Ai Weiwei are among the six artists that have designed covers for ES Magazine celebrating the "resilience of London" in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire and recent terror attacks.

[199] In September 2019, the newly expanded and renovated Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis opened with a major exhibition of work by Ai Weiwei: "Bare Life".