It’s a bitterly cold, bright Saturday afternoon — just last Saturday, in fact — and hundreds of people are queueing in Hyde Park. They’re not waiting to skate at Winter Wonderland or to sit on Father Christmas’ lap. Although Ai Weiwei is wearing a Santa hat.
The artist, activist and Chinese dissident is at Speaker’s Corner for Human Rights Day, signing blank sheets of paper with invisible ink: a nod to the recent ‘A4 revolution’ in China where public outcry over President Xi Jinping’s harsh ‘Zero Covid’ policies have led to the most significant protests in a generation.
London artist Marc Quinn is one of the first in line. The ‘living sculpture’ Daniel Lismore has arrived in his signa - ture chain-mail head-dress. Shirley, 26, is five-months’ pregnant and has come from Belgium because she wants her baby to be an artist like Ai. Nami Li and Foiehe Yang, two Chinese students sipping Starbucks coffees, demon - strated at the Chinese Embassy last month. Alice, 32, wants to pick up a signed sheet of paper for her friends who are currently in prison for protesting with Just Stop Oil. ‘It’s so amazing that you’re here!’ gushes one young woman. ‘Well, I have to be somewhere,’ he shrugs. When he runs out of blank paper he gamely starts signing anything that is thrust in front of him — £20 notes, a leaf, a fluffy unicorn.
Eventually, we make it to The Lanesborough hotel. In the lobby he inspects two blue-and-white Chinese-style vases, not dissimilar to the 2,000-year-old urn he smashed for a photo series early in his career or the ones he often paints with the Coca-Cola logo. Ai orders Earl Grey tea (black) and speaks intensely and slowly, often with his eyes closed.
He describes today’s event as a ‘discovery’. ‘I get to sense the texture of society and who is there for what reason and what they know and expect from me,’ he says. ‘It’s nice to be with people… there is energy there and today is a special day.’
Ai, now 65, explains that human rights take ‘daily defending’, and he should know. One of the world’s most prominent contemporary artists and architects — he designed Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium for the 2008 Olympics and in 2010 filled Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall with 100 million sunflower seeds — he has never been afraid to challenge the authority of the Chinese govern - ment through his work. In April 2011, after years of harassment, he was arrested by Chinese police and jailed for 81 days on insubstantial charges. His passport was confiscated and returned to him only in 2015. Since then, bar one visit to see family in 2016, he has lived in exile.
‘I’m a Chinese person, I’ve got a Chinese passport, my mum lives there, my brother, my sisters live there and that is all,’ he says when I ask him what his relationship to China is now. ‘What I miss the most is that — I speak the Chinese language. I think I can be much more effective if I can talk to my people. But now I’m an outsider.’
He says that this recent wave of protests in China has made him ‘very happy’, but he doesn’t expect them to change anything. ‘I know this government so well and I know these young people are going to be crushed. They’ve already been arrested or disappeared,’ he says, wearily. ‘This is the first lesson they will have to understand — the fighting is going to be tough and maybe they may never win the battle. But in a way they have already won because they recognise themselves as defending basic human rights.’
As well as blank sheets of paper, protesters have used other creative ways to evade the authorities, such as slogans sarcastically praising the government or pictures of llamas — the Chinese characters for ‘llama’ sound the same as ‘go f*** your mother’. Ai has referenced llamas in his work, including photos of him posing naked with only a stuffed alpaca protecting his modesty. He chuckles when I bring this up. ‘This young generation, they fight more gracefully,’ he says. ‘They have humour, they have joy and they’re not just fighting from some kind of hatred but rather to laugh about it. I think that’s very powerful.’ Ai says this moment feels quite different from Tiananmen Square. ‘In 1989 you still had organisations and intellectuals and lead - ers behind the protest, but this is very much self-initiated by frustrated individuals,’ he explains.
Since leaving China in 2016, Ai has lived in Berlin, Cambridge and is now based in Portugal. ‘I’ve realised I can make any place home because nowhere feels like home,’ he says. ‘Growing up in China, my father was exiled and we’ve always been forced here and there.’ His father, Ai Qing, was a notable poet who was ostracised for criticising the Maoist regime. The family was forced to live in a cave for five years. ‘Where I live now is very pleasant but it still feels like it’s a hotel room.’
Am I scared of XI Jinping? I always think [he] should be scared of me
When I bring up China’s treatment of its Uyghur minority, Ai suddenly becomes animated. Human rights groups believe that more than one million Uyghurs (who speak their own language and have a unique culture) are being detained in forced labour camps. ‘If you look at what the government does to the Han people [China’s ethnic major - ity], not just in Xinjiang but everywhere, then you can 100 per cent believe what they will do to minorities,’ he says. ‘They will put anyone in concentration camps. If you lock somebody down in a building for three months, you cannot go out, the door is locked, then it’s like you’re in prison.’
When I ask him what can be done to help the Uyghurs, he isn’t hopeful. ‘Almost nothing, besides always clearly telling them that we cannot accept these kinds of values,’ he says. He seems a bit worn out and resigned. ‘You have to be realistic,’ he shrugs. Does art have the power to change things? ‘I think art is really power - ful, because it makes people recognise their own power,’ he says. What does he make of activism that threatens to damage art, like some of the recent Just Stop Oil protests? ‘Of course it’s alarming and it’s a kind of warning, but I think you can be much more con - structive rather than just destroying.’
His 2020 documentary Coronation records life in Wuhan at the height of the pandemic. ‘I know the truth [about coronavirus] is never going to be revealed,’ he says. ‘Wuhan has the highest-developed scientific research centre, and then I found out the US are putting money into this centre and French scientists are also giving support so it’s fishy… you smell it. The virus didn’t come from nature. But what can we do? Make some documentaries and show some facts.’
He says China’s Communist Party told him that making this film was a ‘huge mistake’, but he sent them a link and they said it was ‘very honest’. I ask him if he ever feels scared to criticise the government or President Jinping? ‘I’ve got a pretty strong nerve so I shouldn’t feel scared,’ he says. ‘I always think they should feel scared.’
Ai says he likes to cook for friends or play cards to relax. I’ve heard he is a formidable blackjack player. ‘Oh, I’m not very good,’ he smiles. ‘But I try to survive in an impossible game.’
