If there is anyone in the art world with the legitimacy to question narratives of power, it is Ai Weiwei. The Chinese artist spent his childhood in exile with his family in a remote region of China because of Mao's repression and decided to leave his country in 2015 after suffering intense state persecution for drawing attention to the more than 5,000 schoolchildren who died in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Now, at 69 and living a quiet life in his country house in Portugal's Alentejo region, he remains on his guard and directs his distrust towards Western democracies and their use of artificial intelligence as a subtle form of censorship.
"It may be too late to avoid its dangers. We no longer have privacy and when individuals have no privacy they are no longer individuals, but become the perfect product," declared Ai Weiwei at Brussels' Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, in front of the more than 2,000 people who had packed the main auditorium to attend the conversation between the artist and Belgian cultural manager Chris Dercon, of the Fondation Cartier, about his latest book 'Ai Weiwei on Censorship' (Thames & Hudson, 2026), held at the beginning of October.
