Trace

“Trace” is a portrait series of 176 people from around the world who have been imprisoned or exiled because of their beliefs or affiliations. This gallery includes a selection of portraits of individuals detained or persecuted by China’s government.

Culture

12.19.14

‘One Day the People Will Speak Out for Me’

Sheila Melvin

The ongoing exhibition “@Large: Ai Weiwei at Alcatraz” is both revelatory and heart-wrenching, a stunning and sobering work by an artist who understands firsthand the fragility and pricelessness of freedom.Detained without warning or charge for 81...

Each likeness was built by hand from LEGO bricks. These images are the artist’s rendering of the work. For-Site, the foundation that granted Ai Wei Wei a residency to develop this work, writes: “Assembling a multitude of small parts into a vast and complex whole, the work may bring to mind the relationship between the individual and the collective, a central dynamic in any society and a particularly charged one in contemporary China.”

Ai selected these individuals based on information provided by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, as well as independent research by the artist’s studio and the For-Site Foundation.