By Sukhdev Sandhu
Publication Date: 2026-01-22 07:00:00
‘C“Chinese culture is the opposite of provocation,” Ai Weiwei once told an interviewer. “It seeks to seek harmony in human nature and society.” Harmony has never been his thing. But a provocation? In abundance. As a student at the Beijing Film Academy in the late 1970s, he joined an artist group called Stars, whose slogan was: “We demand political democracy and artistic freedom.” When he returned to Beijing in the 1990s after a decade in inner-city New York, he and a few friends published and distributed samizdat-style books devoted to off-piste, often political art that government censors fear.
Ai’s own work was bolshie and anathema to guardians of good taste. In his “Study of Perspective” series, he raised the middle finger at places around the world — including Tiananmen Square, the Eiffel Tower and the White House — that are expected to inspire awe, joy and awe. In the self-explanatory photo sequence Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995)…
