Ai Weiwei picks Portugal for new show, home: 'Always make decisions by my personal instinct'
Ai arrived in Portugal almost two years ago and says he has no plans to return to Germany or England, where he has also lived since leaving China in 2015.
Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei poses by his sculpture "Forever Bicycles" during a press preview of his new exhibition "Rapture" in Lisbon, Thursday, June 3, 2021. The world-renowned artist is putting on the biggest show of his career, and he is doing it in a place he's fallen in love with: Portugal.
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Ai arrived in Portugal almost two years ago and says he has no plans to return to Germany or England, where he has also lived since leaving China in 2015.
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“I have a great feeling” about Portugal, the artist said Thursday. “This is a place I’m staying.”
Ai’s show in São Paulo in 2018 covered twice the area of the Lisbon exhibit but had fewer works on display.“Rapture” is being presented in a long, low, riverside building that housed Portugal’s national rope factory starting in the 18th century and now hosts temporary art exhibitions. Ai’s show runs until Nov. 28. The 85 pieces include some of Ai’s iconic works, as well as new ones produced exclusively in Portugal. “Forever Bicycles,” from 2015, a giant sculpture using 960 stainless steel bicycles as building blocks, stands at the entrance to the building. Ai’s 16-meter-long (52-foot-long) black inflatable boat with human figures, which alludes to the migration crisis, is also in Lisbon, as are some other of his well-known installations, sculptures, videos and photographs.
Ai notes, however, that most of the works “have never met each other” and are appearing in the same place for the first time.
Ai was arrested at Beijing’s airport in April 2011 and held for 81 days without explanation during a wider crackdown on dissent. He moved to Europe after Chinese authorities returned his passport.
He has traveled across Portugal visiting craftspeople and manufacturers who use traditional Portuguese methods and materials such as marble, textiles, hand-painted tiles and cork.
His experimentation has yielded a self-portrait sculpture in cork, a cut-out world map in fabric that stands about 1.5 meters (5 feet) high, a 40-meter-long (130-feet-long) rug, and a marble cylinder almost 2 meters (6.5 feet) high.
Marcello Dantas, the show’s Brazilian curator, says that Ai arrived in Portugal for the first time in 2019 on a flight that landed at 8 a.m. By lunchtime, he had bought a house near the farming town of Montemor-o-Novo, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Lisbon.
“I always make decisions by my personal instinct,” Ai said. “I feel comfortable here.”
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