Ai Weiwei, 2012. Photo by Gao Yuan

Media Preview for Ai Wei Wei: According to What?

Wednesday, April 16, 2014 11 a.m.-2 p.m.

A noon program will feature provocative Chinese artist Ai Weiwei speaking about the Brooklyn presentation of his exhibition in a video that he created in Beijing especially for the media preview. The artist is unable to travel because his passport has been confiscated by Chinese authorities.

Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman will make brief remarks, followed byan exhibition walk-through with Sharon Matt Atkins, Managing Curator of Exhibitions, Brooklyn Museum and Mami Katoaka, Mori Art Museum Chief Curator.

• This is the first North American survey of the work of artist-activist Ai Weiwei. 
• The Brooklyn presentation includes several major works not seen in previous venues and marks the first large-scale museum exhibition of Ai's work in New York. Brooklyn is the final stop on the exhibition tour.
• A new addition to the exhibition is S.A.C.R.E.D., a monumental work created in response to the artist's 81-day incarceration by the Chinese authorities in 2011, making its first appearance in North America since it debuted at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Also new to the exhibition is Ye Haiyan, an installation of photographs and the personal belongings of a women's rights activist who has been evicted from her home multiple times by the Chinese government.  
• The exhibition will include the artist's work Colored Vases, which was recently vandalized while the exhibition was on view at the Pérez Museum in Miami.

Light refreshments will be available.

Ai Weiwei is a conceptual artist, sculptor, photographer, filmmaker, and activist whose interdisciplinary practice examines the interrelations between art, society, and individual experience while exploring universal topics such as culture, history, politics, and tradition. 

Ai Weiwei: According to What? is organized by the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. It is curated by Mami Kataoka, Mori Art Museum Chief Curator, and the Brooklyn presentation is organized by Sharon Matt Atkins, Managing Curator of Exhibitions, Brooklyn Museum.

Also on view: Swoon: Submerged Motherlands, April 11-August 24, 2014

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