Inside the Former ‘Underworld' Where Ai Weiwei Makes Art

New York Times

11-03-2025

For part of the year, the artist and activist Ai Weiwei works in a cavernous 30,000-square-foot studio on the underground levels of a former 19th-century brewery in Berlin. Its triple-height vaulted cellars, which Ai, a self-taught architect, renovated himself after leaving his native China in 2015, are now pristine and well-lit, but when he first visited the long-abandoned subterranean space, it was 'completely dark,' he says, 'like an underworld.' In that way, it recalls the underground home where the artist lived for five years as a child, a place he calls 'the black hole': a bare shelter on the edge of the Gurbantünggüt Desert in the remote Xinjiang region, one of the sites where Ai's father, the renowned poet Ai Qing, was exiled following China's Anti-Rightist Campaign in the late 1950s. In that half-buried home, Ai first encountered the authoritarianism and censorship that he has now spent four decades resisting, ridiculing and at times enduring again, as a defender of human rights and self-proclaimed political 'troublemaker.' Today, he travels frequently, stopping in Berlin; Cambridge, England, where his sixteen-year-old son, Lao, his only child, attends school; and Montemor-o-Novo, a town in the countryside of southern Portugal whose sunny climate reminds him of his childhood in the desert. That approximately 20-acre property hosts a few assistants, as well as many cats, dogs, birds and fish and a reconstruction of his wooden Shanghai studio that was demolished by local authorities in 2011. Ai is used to constant movement, and to the possibility of displacement. 'The concept of a home has never been truly established for me,' he says.
On a recent visit to his Berlin studio, I followed Ai, 67, down a narrow staircase into an austere, windowless alcove. Its concrete floor was scattered with twisted steel rods from the installation work 'Rebar,' which Ai made in China between 2008 and 2012, sourcing the metal from school buildings flattened by the devastating Sichuan earthquake. 'Rebar' and similar works made in response to the earthquake critique the government's corrupt construction regulations and lack of transparency in the tragedy's aftermath. This is one of the projects that, in addition to his prolific online writings, helped turn Ai into one of the most famous dissident artists of the past few decades. The resulting surveillance and a government-ordered detention eventually drove him to leave Beijing for Berlin, a city he says appealed to him for its mix of 'ruin' and 'new life.' In Ai's archival room, a large world map that helped him plan his documentary on refugees, 'Human Flow' (2017), leaned against a wall beside an overgrown fiddle-leaf fig tree. On display elsewhere were dozens of antique Qing dynasty wooden chairs, from the participatory project 'Fairytale' (2007), for which Ai conveyed 1,001 volunteers from China to the Documenta art exhibition in Kassel, Germany.
Accumulation — the head-spinning accrual of hundreds, thousands or millions of identical objects — is fundamental to Ai's interventions, which often comment on both collective action and consumer culture. Sometimes he finds items that speak directly to a predetermined theme or event, as with his headline-making installation of discarded refugee life jackets affixed to the facade of Berlin's Konzerthaus in 2016. But if he finds the right object, he may conceive of a whole project around it. Ai began collecting flea-market antiquities in the mid-1990s, when he lived in China, and now acquaintances and strangers alike frequently tip him off about underappreciated goods that are available in astronomical quantities. One such message is how he came into possession of 30 tons of clothing buttons from a defunct British factory. (''No' is not in my vocabulary,' he says.) After years spent classifying the buttons into 9,000 different categories, his team has begun sewing them into new, textile-based works. Some of these are currently on display at Lisson Gallery in London, which had canceled his 2023 show after the artist's public comments about the Israel-Hamas war. In this exhibit, Ai continues his defense of free speech, with button-adorned block letters spelling out profanity-laden catchphrases across World War II military stretchers and tents. Alongside these works are re-creations of pieces from the Western art historical canon made out of Legos, a material that's become his trademark in recent years.
This week, a retrospective of Ai's work will open at the Seattle Art Museum. The show, his largest ever in the U.S., will also be one of the first to spotlight his early works. Ai lived in New York from 1982 to 1993, working a slew of odd jobs — including as a street portrait artist, a babysitter, a house cleaner and an extra at the Metropolitan Opera — all while creating his first minimalist, Dada-inspired sculptures and intimate black-and-white images of Chinese artists and intellectuals in the East Village. Ai says he feels shy about sharing his lesser-known early projects, but he does so in the hopes that they'll be instructive. 'We all have a beginning,' he says. 'The beginning is always pretty clumsy and unprepared. But if you keep working, you may reach some unknown.'
Ai answered T's Artist's Questionnaire in his Berlin studio office in February. He sat at a long wooden table, beside a pot of green tea and his iPhone, which he uses to take a snapshot of nearly every visitor to his studio — a longstanding practice that he famously deployed to mock the state's surveillance of his Beijing home and studio. In the course of our conversation, Ai, who had a trim beard and wore all black, was by turns mischievous, cryptic and disarmingly earnest.
What's your day like? How much do you sleep, and what's your work schedule?
I've always been a morning person. When I was young, I'd hear my father cutting his beard with scissors — ch, ch, ch, ch — before dawn. He had no tools, just those scissors. He went to sleep at 9 p.m. and woke at 4 a.m. to write.
Before getting dressed, I get online. Too many things are going on these days, and every day has a surprise. I mostly look at political news, not art. There aren't any arguments happening in art today. Art is basically dead. I look at what's really affecting our society: technical developments, craziness about geopolitics.
Coming to the studio is a daily matter. My team and I manage about 10 exhibitions a year — five ongoing, five ahead. I'm not just an artist; I also often curate my own shows. There are too many materials, back stories and ideas for someone else to handle alone.
I don't engage in any social life — no art openings, no circles. I try to keep a few close friends, who feel more like relatives. I usually have dinner with a friend and discuss ideas. I go to sleep around 10 or 11, when my battery runs out. I sleep about six hours a night, which I think is good for someone who's almost 70.
I asked my studio how many times I traveled during the past nearly 10 years since I was forced out of China. They gave me a number I would not believe: 318 times across an international border. I have jet lag very often.
How many hours of creative work do you think you do in a day?
My work is trying to break the boundary of what is normally called 'creative.' I avoid trying to be creative. I try to push myself into normal life and bring the integrity of a normal life into the so-called art world. That makes me very busy. So I should say I'm working all the time, as long as I'm awake.
What's the first piece of art you ever made?
I was 10. We were living underground. There was no window, only a hole in the roof. Pigs ran outside and you'd see their legs from below. We didn't have a light. So I made a lamp from the metal cap of a medicine bottle. I drilled a hole, used a [shoelace as the wick] and lit it with oil. This kind of thing deeply influenced me to say you can always make a change.
Finding a good solution for an idea, developing a form and the skill to achieve it — that should be called art. My practice started early, when I was trying to survive.
What's the worst studio you ever had?
The worst studio was the one that was torn down after I built it — not even used for one day. The regional government asked me to build a studio [in the Jiading district of Shanghai] and I did. The minute I finished and furnished it [in 2011], they tore it down.
What's the first work you ever sold? For how much?
A portrait of Marcel Duchamp made from a wire coat hanger ['Hanging Man' (1985)]. I had a show in SoHo [in 1988] in a friend's gallery. After the show, of course, nobody bought the work, except the gallery owner, who bought three pieces for $300.
When you start a new piece, where do you begin?
The first step is to seduce myself into curiosity. If I can't establish a strong curiosity, I won't feel any interest. The work will be too dry.
How do you know when you're done?
It's very much like a love affair. You have to be attracted to the work for a reason you can't even figure out. And if you totally figure it out, that means you've already lost the attraction. And there's always a new attraction.
How many assistants do you have?
I have a core team that has been with me for the past 10 to 20 years. There are also always newcomers, in and out depending on the project. For a project like 'Sunflower Seeds,' we had to hire 1,600 women to work together. [In 2010, Ai covered the floor of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall with 100 million handcrafted porcelain sunflower seeds.] But sometimes I just do it myself. By myself is fine.
What music do you listen to when you're making art?
I have a distant relationship with music, because when I was growing up, there was no music besides birds or insects singing. I think an appreciation for music needs to be built up in a particular kind of environment.
So you work in silence?
For me, silence is music.
When did you first feel comfortable saying you're a professional artist?
I would never consider myself a professional artist.
Is there a meal you eat on repeat when you're working?
I used to like eating candies. But now I shouldn't eat them, so I don't anymore.
Are you watching any shows right now?
I haven't had a TV for the past thirty years.
What's the weirdest object in your studio?
Me.
How often do you talk to other artists?
I don't. Almost no need.
What about Olafur Eliasson, whose studio is upstairs?
We don't talk about art. He often invites me for dinner. But sometimes he invites me for this kind of society-people event. I'm a little bit scared, so I don't go that often. I love him, he's my little brother, but I don't like social life.
What do you do when you're procrastinating?
My hobby is playing in the casino. It's not easy to survive because the casinos are designed to rob you. I like the game blackjack, which is almost impossible. I sit at the table, any table near the door, and I just start to play.
What's the last thing that made you cry?
The last time I remember crying was when I was detained [by Chinese authorities in 2011]. The interrogator told me, 'With your crime, you have to be sentenced to over 10 years. When you come out, your son will never recognize you.'
Do you usually wear all black when you work?
But what else? It's part of the city in New York or Berlin. Then when I'm in the studio in Portugal, I wear all white. Or sometimes I don't wear anything at all, because it's my land. There are no neighbors. I wear sunshine.
What do you pay for rent?
I think I paid very little to buy this Berlin studio because it had been abandoned for decades. Nobody wanted a space like this. I paid just over a million euros. The renovation costs were about triple.
What do you bulk buy with the most frequency?
I keep buying Legos because I keep making work with them. One work can consist of 600,000 pieces, [like my 2022 reconstruction of] Monet's 'Water Lilies.' We have millions of Legos. That's out of necessity.
There's only one thing I bulk buy out of personal interest — jade. It's very, very rare and expensive. I have a few thousand pieces of ancient Chinese jade. Any extra money I can spend, I spend on jade. I want to destroy the money from this stupid art I'm making. I don't think I deserve to sell any of my artworks. So I use the money to protect these works from earlier civilizations.
Very soon, I'll pass away. My family doesn't need the jade collection. Maybe nobody needs it. That's the sad thing about it. Only a few people care. I don't know where to put it. Maybe I should cast it into a huge concrete block, buried underground.
What's your worst habit?
My worst habit is that I'm too clean. I don't smoke. I don't drink alcohol.
What embarrasses you?
I don't speak German. I don't speak Portuguese. I don't speak many, many beautiful languages in the world.
Do you exercise?
I walk more than 10,000 steps every day. Even during my detention, the doctor told me, Weiwei, you have to walk at least 5,000 steps a day in this room to keep your heart working. I walked back and forth on six tiles, each fifty centimeters long, for five hours a day. That kept me healthy. Otherwise it would've crushed me.
What's your favorite artwork by someone else?
I love Marcel Duchamp's 'The Large Glass' [a sculptural piece between two panes of glass, officially titled 'The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even' (1915-23)]. The beauty of it is that everyone who looks at it will see something different because it's transparent. It took him about eight years to make. And then the glass cracked. People said, 'Oh my God, it's cracked!' But he loved the cracks.
Which work of your own do you regret, or would you do over in a different way now?
I consider my life as one work. And I don't regret it because I have to finish the work before I regret. Though very soon, I will finish this work.
This interview has been edited and condensed.