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Ai Weiwei: Making Sense
Ai has a genius for incorporating pieces of everyday design into his work as a form of protest at government oppression and corruption, or as a means of questioning our cultural fixations.
And where better to parade that talent than at London’s Design Museum, in this career-spanning retrospective?
Installation view, Ai Weiwei: Making Sense, The Design Museum, London 2023. Photo: Ed Reeve.
The Design Museum, London
7 April – 30 July 2023
by VERONICA SIMPSON
Context, as the saying goes, is everything.
An ordinary object can be transformed into something profound, dramatic, witty or disturbing through a shift in presentation and perspective, an escalation or shrinking of scale, or repetition – like the Chinese characters that spell out the names of 5,197 of the schoolchildren who died in the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, many as a result of the collapse of shoddily constructed schools.
Ai Weiwei, Nian Nian Souvenir, 2021.
Installation view, Ai Weiwei: Ma