On the eve of his previous major assembly of work at the Hirshhorn Museum, dissident artist Ai Weiwei found that he was unable to attend the event's opening, as the Chinese government had barred Ai from traveling abroad, an unofficial form of punishment for claims of tax evasion. Which he and his supporters consider a politically motivated attempt to silence one of China’s most high profile and outspoken intellectuals. The impounding of his passport by the Chinese authorities came about in 2011, when he was jailed, without charges, for three months. His effective disappearance gained international attention and protest amongst the international arts community. In his last interview before being detained, "Ai Weiwei: 'China in Many Ways is Just like the Middle Ages'" the artist described the constant state of omnipresent menace and surveillance by the authorities of him and others. In the years following, Weiwei braved periods of house arrest, a beating at the hands of local police that caused a brain hemorrhage, the following prosecution for tax evasion, the shutting down of his online presence within China, the revocation of his design firm’s license, and strikingly, "Ai Weiwei Responds to Chinese Authorities Destroying his Beijing Studio".
When his passport was returned in 2015, he left the country and has not returned since. Now residing in rural Portugal, where he maintains an art studio and farmhouse, Weiwei spoke on his new life as a artist in exile, "Ai Weiwei Finds Peace in Portugal: ‘I Could Throw Away all My Art and Not Feel Much’". Speaking further with The Guardian on everything from living in a dugout in Little Siberia, to his friendship with Allen Ginsberg in New York, Weiwei reveals a life that has driven his restless creativity, "Ai Weiwei: ‘It is So Positive to be Poor as a Child. You Understand how Vulnerable Our Humanity Can Be’". The "Challenging Work" born of this life is on display in Seattle Art Museum's "Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei", his largest survey to date in the United States, which traces his evolution from artist provocateur, to one of the most globally visible critics of authoritarianism. The show features some 130 works in this "Deep Dive into the Provocative and Creative World of Ai Weiwei" spanning the mediums of performance, photography, sculpture, documentary video, and large scale installation. Some of which are known, like the Tate Modern’s commission of 100 million "Sunflower Seeds", while others are here in their international debut, such as "The Cover Page of the Mueller Report, Submitted to Attorney General William Barr by Robert Mueller on March 22, 2019", and others are variations on existing pieces, like the exacting recreation of the room of his extended detention at the hands of Chinese authorities, first seen in the exhibition entitled "S.A.C.R.E.D." for the Venice Biennale.
