{"id":69068,"date":"2026-07-16T07:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T23:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=69068"},"modified":"2026-07-16T07:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T23:19:09","slug":"inside-ai-weiweis-gigantic-manchester-art-show-including-china-detention-recreation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=69068","title":{"rendered":"Inside Ai Weiwei\u2019s gigantic Manchester art show, including China detention recreation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.i-scmp.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/1280x720\/public\/d8\/images\/canvas\/2026\/07\/14\/c585ec4f-facf-4b64-8460-7992ee477bdf_e4586e84.jpg?itok=BWvGYlhi&amp;v=1784005138\" \/><\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<div datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1xdhyk6 ec74h0k0\">This is a summer of love for <span data-qa=\"Component-Text\" class=\"css-0 ef9u0v00\">Chinese artist Ai Weiwei<\/span>, at least in Manchester. The city, whose former mayor, Andy Burnham, is expected to become the United Kingdom\u2019s prime minister on July 20, has made generous room for another celebrity.<\/div>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cButton Up!\u201d, Ai\u2019s largest ever site-specific show, is being held at Aviva Studios, with ads running on the city\u2019s buses and the artist\u2019s face fluttering on banners from lamp posts.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Aviva Studios, which is run by arts organisation Factory International, has created a Chinese teahouse for the event. It offers a special Ai Weiwei menu that includes dim sum \u2013 although Beijing-born Ai is not Cantonese \u2013 and fortune cookies, unknown in China so possibly a reference to the 12 years he spent in the United States. These have Ai quotes tucked inside. Mine said: \u201cThe future belongs to those who question.\u201d<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The show is in The Warehouse \u2013 capable of holding 5,000 people \u2013 and is, of course, massive. No wonder there is an exclamation mark in the title: this exhibition is full of stupendous statistics about Ai!<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Gone are the single-digit days when his middle finger provided concise commentary on Chinese and, later, international sites. Now, as the catalogue puts it, it is all about \u201cmass-manufactured material\u201d being used by the artist \u201cat incomprehensible scales to explore the theme of the individual\u2019s relation to society\u201d.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">And so, in the centre of the gigantic hall there hangs a gleaming new work called <em data-qa=\"ContentSchemaRender-defaultRenderMapFunctions-Component\" class=\"css-1mniedq ex3nmsa15\">Eight-Nation Alliance Flags \u2013 Britain, France, United States, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Austro-Hungarian Empire<\/em> (2024).<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">These flags of the nations that invaded China during the Boxer rebellion (1899-1901) are made from about 300,000 buttons. Ai bought them in 2015 from a manufacturer in Croydon, London, who was offloading 30 tonnes of them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<center><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/lifestyle\/arts\/article\/3360453\/inside-ai-weiweis-gigantic-manchester-art-show-including-china-detention-recreation?utm_source=rss_feed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article At Source <\/a><br \/>\n<center\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a summer of love for Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, at least in Manchester. The city, whose former mayor, Andy Burnham, is expected to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[1501,832,10600,21071,4076,26593,20724,616,26592],"class_list":["post-69068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-art","tag-china","tag-detention","tag-gigantic","tag-including","tag-manchester","tag-recreation","tag-show","tag-weiweis","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/69069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}