Landing in town this April, Making Sense will be Ai Weiwei’s first design-focused exhibition
Ai Weiwei, a hugely prominent Chinese artist and activist, will open his largest UK show in eight years this April at the Design Museum. Ai Weiwei: Making Sense will feature a range of works that have never been seen before in the UK alongside some major new pieces that are to be displayed for the first time. This also marks the first exhibition of Weiwei’s to focus on design and architecture.
At the centre of the exhibition will be a series of large-scale, site-specific installations (or ‘fields’), featuring various objects in their hundreds of thousands, three of which are new commissions. One field comprises thousands of fragments of the remains of Ai’s porcelain sculptures that were destroyed by the Chinese state in 2018; another brings together a huge amount of Lego that was donated to Weiwei by the public when the brand refused to sell him a bulk order; and another features porcelain cannonballs from the Song dynasty.
Also on display will be objects and artworks from throughout Weiwei’s career that explore several tensions: past and present, hand and machine, precious and worthless, construction and destruction. And outside the exhibition gallery, there’ll be more large-scale works that’ll be accessible to all Design Museum visitors – but you won’t want to miss the whole show, will you?
Fri 7th April – Sun 30th July 2023
224-238 Kensington High St, London W8 6AG
designmuseum.org