“I’m not interested in making very big things just for the sake of it,” says Ai Weiwei (b. 1957), the world-renowned artist and activist behind Sunflower Seeds, which filled Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall with 100 million porcelain kernels back in 2010. Now, Ai Weiwei returns to the UK – and to huge works of art – with Button Up!, his largest site-specific exhibition to date. The venue: Manchester’s vast Aviva Studios, the city’s landmark cultural space. It opened in 2023, and has since presented shows of David Hockney and Yayoi Kusama. Notably, for Ai Weiwei’s purposes, it spans more than 13,000 square feet. “That wonderful Warehouse space calls for monumental work,” he continues. And on that promise, he certainly delivers.
Button Up! features two new commissions created especially for the venue: Eight-Nation Alliance Flags, made up of nearly half a million buttons, and History of Bombs, his biggest-ever toy brick artwork at 25 metres wide and 10 metres high. Beyond their awe-inspiring size, these artworks pack a powerful conceptual punch, working together to reveal how historic systems of trade, empire and exploitation continue to resonate in today’s world. Eight-Nation Alliance Flags centres on the early 20th century invasion of China by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the USA. History of Bombs, meanwhile, comprises haunting, life-sized models of weapons of mass destruction.
These new and characteristically political pieces sit alongside other large-scale works on view in the UK for the first time: Law of the Journey (2017), a 49m long inflatable migrant boat containing hundreds of human figures; Wang Family Ancestral Hall (2015), a Ming dynasty ancestral temple reassembled from 1,500 individual wooden pieces; and La Commedia Umana (2017-2021), a black Murano glass chandelier made up of over 2,000 fragments and weighing nearly three tonnes. Also on display is Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (2010), a re-envisioning of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac. Together, these works demonstrate the breadth of Ai Weiwei’s practice. Here is an artist who uses an array of materials – ranging from traditional craft to everyday objects – to examine displacement, globalisation, tradition and power.
The show’s title, Button Up!, is a playful twist on the artist’s ongoing battle with censorship. Ai Weiwei is known for weaving elements of his life into his work; he has been especially candid about his experiences under China’s totalitarian regime and in exile. Earlier this summer, he made headlines with Sewing a Button, an unflinching 24-hour performance as part of the Aviva Studios programme. He reenacted his secret detention by Public Security in China in 2011, an 81-day ordeal during which he was imprisoned without formal charges. The debut performance marked 15 years since those events, and audiences watched as Ai Weiwei slept, ate, exercised, wrote, washed and was interrogated in a cell measuring 7.2 by 3.6 metres.
Button Up! spans 200 years of global history, but it remains firmly rooted in Manchester. “Visiting the city for this exhibition – the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution – and reflecting on Britain’s global territorial expansion made me realise I had to explore that history and understand how it connects to the forces driving today’s wars and global crises,” Ai Weiwei reflects. “The world today is deeply divided, with tragedy all around. Understanding history goes hand in hand with standing up for truth and justice.”
Low Kee Hong, Factory International’s Creative Director, shares in this sentiment: “We are thrilled that Ai Weiwei is creating new works for Aviva Studios and is taking the history of manufacturing in Manchester as a starting point to explore today’s politics. To present both new artwork alongside his first ever durational performance means audiences can truly experience the fearless interplay between the personal and political in Weiwei’s work.” In Aviva Studios, Ai Weiwei finds a venue that matches the physical scale of his works and allows them to speak clearly. That’s what makes Button Up! such an enticing prospect.
Ai Weiwei: Button Up! is at Aviva Studios, Manchester, until 6 September.
Words: Eleanor Sutherland
Image Credits:
1. Ai Weiwei at Ai Weiwei: Button Up!. Photo Credit: Hugo Glendinning.
2. Installation view of Ai Weiwei: Button Up! at Aviva Studios. Photo Credit: Hugo Glendinning.
3. Installation view of Ai Weiwei: Button Up! at Aviva Studios. Photo Credit: Hugo Glendinning.
