Exhibition: Ai Weiwei: Making Sense

Ai Weiwei's exhibition focuses on design with a mix recent works and commissioned pieces, inviting us into a meditation on value and humanity, art and activism.

Ai Weiwei is one of the most significant and recognised artists working today. Known around the world for his powerful art and activism, Ai does not differentiate between disciplines: his practice glides across art, architecture, design, film, collecting and curating.

This major exhibition, developed in collaboration with the artist, will be the first to present his work as a commentary on design and what it reveals about our changing values. Through his engagement with material culture, Ai explores the tension between past and present, hand and machine, precious and worthless, construction and destruction.

The exhibition draws on Ai fascination with historical Chinese artefacts, placing their traditional craftsmanship in dialogue with the more recent history of demolition and urban development in China. The result is a meditation on value – on histories and skills that have been ignored or erased.

Discover some of the artist’s most important works displayed alongside collections of objects that have never been seen and new commissions made for the exhibition.

Although most of the exhibition will be behind the pay desk to visit, there will also be large scale works displayed in the main museum atrium which is free to visit, as well as in the courtyard outside the museum.