An exhibition showcasing Ai Weiwei’s five-decade career, from works created in New York in the 80s to new sculptures created in Ukraine in 2025.

The exhibition is arranged as a dialogue between the artist and Palazzo Ardinghelli. The show features a series of powerful works created after the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan and dedicated to the memory of its losses. One of these works is Straight, a seminal piece for Ai Weiwei that is being shown in L’Aquila for the first time in three different spaces. This sculpture, like the other works in the exhibition, underscores the lasting impact of natural catastrophes and human-generated conflicts, highlighting themes such as corruption and tragedy. It celebrates human resilience and the power of the drive to create.

On display are almost seventy works, some of them displayed for the first time in a museum, spanning Weiwei’s entire artistic career: installations, videos, photographs, sculptures conceived as paintings and iconic subjects by artists like Munch, Van Gogh and Ed Ruscha re-interpreted using toy bricks.

He experiments, connects, collects, recycles and invents in a way that is never just a pure exercise in form. Through variety and the subversion of traditional values, he encourages us to look at the world from different points of view. Weiwei’s work is rooted in his personal experience, yet its significance is universal.

header: stills from the music video Dumbass, 2013, 5min 13 sec, cinematography by Christopher Doyle, Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio