Ai Weiwei
Dropped a Han dynasty urn, filled the Turbine Hall with sunflower seeds, and was detained for 81 days.
Ai Weiwei was born in Beijing in 1957; his father, the poet Ai Qing, was denounced and exiled to a labour camp, and Ai spent his childhood in Xinjiang. He lived in New York through the 1980s, returned to China, and helped design the Bird's Nest stadium before publicly disowning it. Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, Sunflower Seeds in the Turbine Hall, and the investigation into the children killed by school buildings in the Sichuan earthquake are the best-known works. He was detained for eighty-one days in 2011, had his passport withheld for four years, and now lives in Europe.
Editions are the central practical fact. Much of the work exists in defined editions — the porcelain seeds, the zodiac heads, the marble and wood pieces, the wallpapers and prints — at several scales, and identifying edition, size and fabrication is the whole task. Loose sunflower seeds circulate widely and are not works. Pieces incorporating genuine antique material, including Neolithic and Han pottery and salvaged temple timber, raise export and cultural-property questions that should be settled before any sale. The studio issues certificates.
If you own a work by Ai Weiwei
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.