Ai Weiwei was born 28 August 1957 in Beijing. He is a Chinese contemporary artist and activist.
Ai Weiwei collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron as the artistic consultant on the
Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Summer Olympics. As a political activist, he has been
highly and openly
critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights.
In 2011, following his arrest at Beijing Capital International Airport on 3 April, he was held for
81 days without any official charges being filed; officials alluded to
their allegations of "economic crimes".
Ai's father was the Chinese poet Ai Qing,[8] who was denounced during
the Anti-Rightist Movement. In 1958, the family was sent to a labour camp
in Beidahuang, Heilongjiang, when Ai was one year old. They were subsequently
exiled to Shihezi, Xinjiang in 1961, where they lived for 16 years. Upon Mao
Zedong's death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, the family returned
to Beijing in 1976. In 1978, Ai enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy and studied animation.
In 1978, he was one of the founders of the early avant garde art group the "Stars",
together with Ma Desheng, Wang Keping, Huang Rui, Li Shuang, Ah Cheng and Qu Leilei.
The group disbanded in 1983,[11] yet Ai participated in regular Stars group shows,
The Stars: Ten Years, 1989 (Hanart Gallery, Hong Kong and Taipei), and a
retrospective exhibition in Beijing in 2007: Origin Point (Today Art Museum, Beijing).
From 1981 to 1993, he lived in the United States. He was among the first generation of students to study abroad following China's reform in 1980, being one of the 161 students to take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) in 1981[13]. For the first few years, Ai lived in Philadelphia and San Francisco. He studied English at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley.[14] Later, he moved to New York City.[11] He studied briefly at Parsons School of Design.[15] Ai attended the Art Students League of New York from 1983 to 1986, where he studied with Bruce Dorfman, Knox Martin and Richard Pousette-Dart.[16] He later dropped out of school, and made a living out of drawing street portraits and working odd jobs. During this period, he gained exposure to the works of Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Jasper Johns, and began creating conceptual art by altering readymade objects.
Ai befriended beat poet Allen Ginsberg while living in New York, following a chance meeting at a poetry reading where Ginsberg read out several poems about China. Ginsberg had travelled to China and met with Ai's father, the noted poet Ai Qing, and consequently Ginsberg and Ai became friends. When he was living in the East Village (from 1983 to 1993), Ai carried a camera with him all the time and would take pictures of his surroundings wherever he was. The resulting collection of photos were later selected and is now known as the New York Photographs. At the same time, Ai became fascinated by blackjack card games and frequented Atlantic City casinos. He is still regarded in gambling circles as a top tier professional blackjack player according to an article published on blackjackchamp.com.
