Weiwei’s studios inform a narrative about creative resistance
to BerlinS Aedes Structure Discussion boardThe exposition “5 workspaces” invite guests to have a look at the Weiwei studios on the continents. On the event of the opening on Could 23, 2025, Designboom spoke completely with the artistDiscovering how every workspace embodies its political opinions, private historical past and inventive imaginative and prescient. A central aim of the exhibition is the newest weiwei studio in Montemor-O-Novo, Portugalconstructed utilizing conventional Chinese language Wooden processing strategies.
“My studio is an extension of my physique and my psychological state. After all, she is political. Whoever sees the exhibition can perceive – it isn’t the truth that I wish to be political. It is just political,” AI Weiwei says Designboom.
All photographs form of Aedes Structure Discussion board and of Weiwei Studio, except in any other case supplied in any other case
Artist, architect and utilized for human rights
As a substitute of illustrating architectural typologies or design processes, “5 workspaces” explores weiwei studios as existential circumstances, rooted within the artist’s political exile. Born in Beijing, Ai Weiwei spent his coaching years in distant areas of China, the place his father, the poet Ai Qing had been expelled in the course of the anti-right motion. Identified for his criticism by authoritarian and advocacy techniques for human rights, of Weiwei are among the many most influential figures in artwork and modern activism. His wide-art observe, structure, movie and social involvement of the Chinese language conventional craft with world aesthetics and private narrative.
5 workspaces on the Aedes Structure Discussion board till July 2, 2025 | Picture © Erik-Jan Ouwerkerk
5 workspaces at Aedes Structure Discussion board in Berlin
The exhibition “5 workspaces” from Aedes Structure Discussion board follows key chapters from the artist’s life by means of the structure lens, presenting 5 studios situated in Beijing, Shanghai, Berlin and Montemor-O-Novo. Designed, commanded and inhabited by AI Weiwei himself, every workspace mirrors the change of private and political realities, documented by architectural fashions, images, drawings and private texts.
“What is comparable is that each one are associated to a single particular person – I – making an attempt to suit right into a working state. However this situation is all the time altering. It’s extra about connecting to my life, the circumstances during which I used to be provided, concerning the environments during which I lived, how I turned an architect, how I acted in social and political moments,” He displays in our dialog.
Ai Weiwei who works in life nonetheless in his studio, Caochangdi, Beijing, 2000
His first studio in Longzhuashu, Beijing, redefined an Austere concrete courtyard with a quiet gesture: Danish grass planting. The transformation was refined, however sturdy symbolic – an act of recovering the house by means of care. Within the early 2000s, he designed his compound within the Caochangdi district, additionally in Beijing, which quickly turned a hub for creative collaboration and large-scale installations. Each areas will probably be subsequently demolished by the authorities, along with others: the Malu studio close to Shanghai in 2011, demonstrated shortly after completion, and the Zuoyou studio in 2018, destroying the work nonetheless saved inside.
“I’m accustomed to irrational violence and with out rationalization. You can not determine the logic. You solely take it and survive in it, ‘ The artist tells, reflecting on these losses. “I grew up in any such setting. I used to be born in it. My father was exiled the 12 months I used to be born. Because it was proven within the exhibition, I lived underground with my father -in a black gap.”
Demolition of Shanghai Studio in Malu
In Berlin, Weiwei arrange a studio within the cellar of a former brewery – an underground, introspective house, which resonates with years spent in compelled exile along with his father, on the distance of Xinjiang. Eliminated beneath the floor, for the artist, working underground will not be solely a bodily expertise, but additionally an emotional excavation, modeled by reflection and a return to reminiscence.
Speaking to Designboom, AI Weiwei elaborates on this temporal change: “I’m thought-about a up to date artist, however my deepest feelings are related to the previous. I’m not conversant in German tradition, as a result of I don’t converse the language. I all the time relate my observe with the previous. I recognize human reminiscence. With out reminiscence, we have no idea who we’re or the place we come from. Then we can not recognize our present state.–
Within the Studio AI Weiwei in Berlin, 2018
Weiwei’s most up-to-date workspaces are in Montemor-O-Novo, a rural metropolis in southern Portugal. The expansive wood construction relies on the standard Chinese language carpentry, assembled with out nails or screws. Designed with 100 odd columns and a rotated roof, which resounds its demolished studio close to Shanghai, the constructing is a monument of the craft and cultural reminiscence. This fifth studio, accomplished in 2023, resists categorization. Formally registered as a warehouse, it doesn’t comprise any outlined program.
“Structure is a part of our physique – our thoughts and bodily state”, Reviewing the choice to settle in Portugal, AI Weiwei notes a change in rhythm and views. “I desire a peaceable and quiet location. A spot the place you may have a look at the sky and notice that there are stars. Within the morning, you may see the solar’s rays. Within the night, the moon seems. That is matched with my psychological situation at present.”