Trump Building a Wall is a 'Ridiculous Act': Ai Weiwei
The Chinese artist and dissident spoke to Newsweek about Trump’s policies, the Guggenheim's decision to pull artwork and how the world has failed refugees.
“Good art always has a sense of activism,” says Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, who was once detained for protesting his country’s human rights abuses (officially, it was for tax evasion). After being arrested at the airport and confined in a tiny room under the constant watch of uniformed military police sergeants for 81 days in 2011, authorities kept his passport for four more years. When he finally got it back, he quickly left China.
Ai may be one of the world’s best-known contemporary artists, whose , but it’s not hard to understand why he might feel some kinship with refugees. His childhood was spent in exile in remote regions of China after his father, a renowned poet, was accused of being
