The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, whose first U.S. solo exhibit outside of New York is stopping next month at the Knoxville Museum of Art, has been in the news a lot recently since his arrest by Chinese officials on vague charges of "economic crimes."
Ai is a complicated figure, a playful provocateur whose activism and ire appear to have been stirred to new intensity by the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province that killed more than 5,000 children. At a German gallery recently, he created an installation of children's backpacks that spelled out "She lived happily on this earth for seven years," a quote from the mother of one of the children killed in the earthquake, and he maintained an office near his studio where he conducted an investigation into the shoddy construction of the school, which has been blamed for the high death toll.
Evan Osnos profiled Ai in The New Yorker a year ago, and has been tracking his case in the magazine's Letter From China blog.
Ai's exhibit Dropping the Urn, in which Ai adds contemporary touches to ancient pottery, opens at KMA on May 13 and runs through Aug. 7.
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