Installation view of Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (Gold)
Courtesy of The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Lisa Rastl, Reiner Riedler and Ai Weiwei Studio; © Ai Weiwei
“I’m like a shattered mirror,” the artist Ai Weiwei tells W one morning in a cozy corner of the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), where he’s mounting his first U.S. retrospective in over a decade. “A mirror can see a perfect image, but once you shatter it, the pieces reflect reality, with all its cracks.”
This mission statement is on full display with Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei, which will be on view through September 7. The exhibition features 130 works spanning 40 years of the 67-year-old artist’s provocative, humorous, and at times devastating artistic practice. “Either you do all of Ai Weiwei or nothing at all,” the show’s curator, Foong Ping, said. Foong, who typically focuses on ancient rather than contemporary Chinese art, was interested in putting Ai’s works into the context of the current historical moment, which “calls for such an artist.”