The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) presents Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei (March 12–September 7, 2025), the largest-ever US exhibition of works by the globally renowned conceptual artist. Organized by SAM, Ai, Rebel surveys Ai Weiwei’s career over four decades and highlights his artistic strategies for questioning forms of power, disrupting artistic canons, and challenging political authoritarianism. This is the artist’s first US retrospective in over a decade and features 130 works from the 1980s to the 2020s—ranging across performance, photography, sculpture, video, and installation.

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957) is celebrated as an artist and activist. His work calls upon viewers to examine history, society, and culture, often deploying humor and provocation. Ai, Rebel offers the rare opportunity to engage with the artist’s wide-ranging body of work, including early black-and-white photographs, LEGO and toy brick works, large-scale installations, and videos. It features iconic works by the artist such as Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995), Study of Perspective (1995-2011), Sunflower Seeds (2010), Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (Gold) (2010), and Illumination(2019). The exhibition also features several works making their international debut, including Shells (2022), The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus in Green (2020), and The Cover Page of the Mueller Report, Submitted to Attorney General William Barr by Robert Mueller on March 22, 2019(2019). 

“SAM is thrilled to share this visually spectacular retrospective with our audiences, which explores how Ai Weiwei has been making an impact with his art and activism around the world for the last 40 years,” says Scott Stulen, SAM’s Illsley Ball Nordstrom Director and CEO. “This could not be a more timely and urgent exhibition, as Ai’s work implores us to consider the role of art and artists to question authority, galvanize change, and stand for free expression.”

“Ai Weiwei is a global icon for his commitment to artistic freedom and the relentless pursuit of the truth,” says FOONG Ping, SAM’s Foster Foundation Curator of Chinese Art. “This exhibition takes a deep look at the visual and material hallmarks of his multifaceted practice to better appreciate his legacy. This historical moment calls for such an artist. We watch Ai’s commitment to watching those in power and are reminded of our own agency for collective resistance.”

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The exhibition’s title, Ai, Rebel, is a play on the artist's surname and American author Isaac Asimov’s science fiction classic, I, Robot. Published between 1942 and 1950, this collection of stories explores the impact of technology on society and the ethical implications of artificial intelligence. Asimov’s stories of fake molecules and human-like robots share parallels with Ai Weiwei’s exploration of fakes and replicas. The exhibition is organized in roughly chronological order. Three broad thematic chapters have detailed sections exploring facets of Ai’s practice. 

Introducing the Rebel
Visitors are first greeted by Tree (2010), a massive sculpture composed of remnant tree roots, trunks, and branches that Ai collected, combining various species (camphor, cedar, ginkgo). Several photographic series and other works introduce Ai’s early career and the experiences that shaped his outlook, including the iconic photographic triptych Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995) and eight photographs from the Study of Perspective (1995–2011) series. There are also 25 black-and-white photographs taken during the 1980s when Ai lived in New York City, and 12 black-and-white photographs taken in the 1990s in Beijing after Ai returned to care for his ailing father, the poet Ai Qing.

This section also blazes with the neon sign F.U.C.K. (2000), which once hung in the courtyard of his FAKE Design Studio in Beijing like a company logo, signaling the artist’s long engagement with puns and provocation. “Fake” can be enunciated with Mandarin intonation as “fah-kuh,” becoming this expletive in English. A similarly irreverent and defiant motif of the middle-finger is seen in three examples of Arm with the Finger in Bronze, a sculpture of an arm extended in the gesture of flipping off, as well as two walls covered in the artist’s Finger (2015) wallpaper.

Material Disruptions
Ai, Rebel continues with five galleries exploring Ai Weiwei’s artistic inclination to amass and deconstruct various kinds of materials, a practice that began after he returned to China in 1993. By playing with these raw materials—construction debris, furniture, pottery shards, antiquities—Ai challenges and upends cultural systems of value and gives new meanings to old forms in his work.

·         Homeward Found: Living in New York City, Ai infused his art with memories of home and what he had learned from art movements like Dada and Pop art. In addition to the impact on his art, Ai’s expatriate experiences also challenged him to reconsider his cultural heritage and position in society. Highlights in this section include the Duchamp-inspired Hanging Man(1985); Mao (Facing Forward) (1986), among the last oil paintings he would make; and the modified Chinese army raincoat of Safe Sex (1988) from his first public solo exhibition.

·         Relic, Ruin: Time also plays a role in Ai Weiwei’s questioning of cultural value. Relics and ruins are both remnants of the past, whether they are exalted or abandoned. “Found” objects in Ai’s work—salvaged trash and treasured artifacts alike—reflect upon the values assigned or denied to material things. Highlights in this section include Han Dynasty Urn with Coca-Cola Logo (2011), Tang Dynasty Courtesan in Bottle (1994), and Dust to Dust (2009).

·         Useful, Useless: Ai transforms classical and everyday furniture into sculptures that challenge the original furniture's utilitarian function by removing or combining pieces in unexpected ways. Highlights in this section include Corner Table with Three Legs (2006), Grapes (2011), Map of China (2004), and Divina Proportione (2006).

·         Real Fakes: Ai often plays with the concepts of real versus fake in his work and challenges our perceptions of originals and copies. Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (Gold) (2010) is on view in this section, as well as several of the artist’s replicas of blue-and-white Qing-dynasty porcelain. Two actual 18th century Qing-dynasty blue-and-white porcelains from SAM’s collection are also on view here.

·         Making Magnified: This section reveals the spectacle of multiplicity enabled by mass production in China, which has made it possible for repetition in immense quantities to become a cornerstone of Ai’s practice. On view is Sunflower Seeds (2010), an artful pile of over one ton (2000 pounds) of porcelain, shaped and decorated to look just like edible sunflower seeds. The work was originally commissioned for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London. Shells(2022) makes its international debut; this work depicts the hulls of eaten sunflower seeds in porcelain. Also on view in this section is Marble Sofa (2011), a sculpture of a stuffed leather armchair in marble.

Watching Ai Watching Power
The final thematic chapter traces Ai Weiwei’s turn toward overt activism in solidarity with those suffering from natural and human-made disasters and from state surveillance and oppression. Due to his activism efforts, Ai was detained multiple times and subjected to house arrest. In 2011, the Chinese authorities held Ai without formal charges for 81 days in an undisclosed location. After moving to Berlin in 2015, Ai began to speak out about the refugee crisis in Europe and other world events.

·         Surveilling Catastrophe: The 2008 Sichuan earthquake was a turning point for the artist, leading him to launch a social media campaign calling for greater governmental transparency regarding casualties and substandard buildings. Several works on view respond to this catastrophe, including Names of the Student Earthquake Victims Found by the Citizens’ Investigation (2008–11), Snake Ceiling (2008), Forge (2008–12), and the video Little Girl's Cheeks (2009). 81 (2013) is a life-sized mockup of his padded jail cell: sparse furnishings, stains, and walls wrapped in polyethylene foam. The structure’s exterior remains featureless because Ai was brought there hooded and never saw it. Cameras inside the cell transmit to screens elsewhere.

·         Heroic Odysseys: This section features works responding to the hardships and traumas faced by people forced to migrate to Europe from different regions, including Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Ai posed himself in the same way as that of the lifeless body of Alan Kurdi, a two-year-old from Syria who drowned in 2015, and then took a photograph that stirred up great controversy. After the Death of Marat (2019) recreates that photograph in toy bricks.

·         The Art of Resistance: LEGO is a medium prized by Ai for its visual connections to Roman mosaics, Western pointillist paintings, and smartphone snapshots. This section features virtuosic works in LEGO or toy bricks including The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus in Green (2020), on public view for the first time; Illumination (2019), and Scream (2020), which recreates Edvard Munch’s famous work with the notable addition of an infamous image of Ai Weiwei naked except for an alpaca sock-puppet covering his privates. This section also features The First Page of the Mueller Report, Submitted to Attorney General William Barr by Robert Mueller on March 22, 2019 (2019), another work on view to the public for the first time. The report described an investigation conducted by special counsel and former FBI director Robert Mueller into Russian efforts to manipulate the 2016 US presidential election; Ai re-created the cover—and the first page nearby—of the Mueller Report in toy bricks and in enormous scale, prompting a reflection on the fragility of democratic processes.

·         The Art of Resistance: Video Archives: A screening room gallery runs three long-form videos on rotation: Human Flow (2017), Cockroach (2020), and Coronation (2020). The museum will also host screenings in the Plestcheeff Auditorium on dates TBA.