Chinese contemporary artist and activist Ai Weiwei has returned to China for the first time in a decade, following his 2011 detention and 2015 self-imposed exile. 

Highly vocal about human rights, Ai is best known for works that criticize Chinese government corruption and censorship. One of his most notable pieces is the 2009 installation Remembering, which commemorated the children who passed away in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake when state-built schools collapsed due to substandard construction.  

In The Guardian’s 2018 “The Start” podcast, Ai recalled that “the Chinese government censored and controlled all of the information about the earthquake.” Forming a citizen investigation team, Ai took it upon himself to document the structural failures responsible for the thousands of deaths, and created a blog listing the names of all known student casualties. 

His investigative work led to multiple arrests. In 2011, Ai himself was detained on charges of tax evasion—widely understood as political retaliation for his activism—resulting in the confiscation of his passport. After recovering it in 2015, Ai relocated to Europe, spending the next decade living in Germany, the UK, and Portugal. 

Despite state pressure, Ai was not so easily silenced, and continued his practice in exile. As Coronation (2020) examines the politics behind the Covid-19 lockdown in Wuhan, Cockroach (2020) addresses the 2019 Hong Kong protests, while Rohingya (2021) documents the displacement of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in 2017. 

In mid-December 2025, Ai traveled to China with his son. Upon arrival at the Beijing Capital International Airport, he was stopped for nearly two hours of questioning and inspection, but faced no further interference during his three-week stay. According to a report by CNN, he described his trip as “smooth” and “pleasant,” expressing that returning to the country “felt like a phone call that had been disconnected for 10 years suddenly reconnecting.” He speculated that China may be entering an “upward phase” characterized by changing values about personal freedoms. 

The artist is preparing a monumental new work for his first major exhibition in Manchester, “Ai Weiwei: Button Up!,” which examines the history of China-Britain relations and its resonance with contemporary injustices. The exhibition opens July 2 and runs through September 6. 

Minnie Chan is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.