Ai Weiwei on display in Florence

With the title of "Free" has just opened the retrospective exhibition that Florence has dedicated to the greatest contemporary Chinese artist.

His great works, between experimentation and provocation, They are visible throughout the exhibition venue of Palazzo Strozzi until 22 January 2017.

Ai Weiwei is known worldwide as an artist and as a symbol dellalotta for freedom of expression, that, in patria, It costs him 81 days in jail and unable to travel and have contact with the press.

His first artistic intervention with Herzog and de Meuron, it has in 2008 with the inauguration of the new Olympic stadium in Beijing. Follow other works, through which it can express its societal and political commitment. With his blog intervenes after Sichuan earthquake, where they died around 6000 children, by writing the name of almost all children perished under the rubble, coming to have 17 million visits and 100 thousand hits a day. Government censorship fell like an ax on his activities with so many personal limitations until the captivity.

The Florentine exhibition, curata da Arturo Galansino, Director General of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, exhibits on the outside of the building, the Renaissance mullioned, of orange life rafts, to propose the issue of migrants who daily cross the sea and difficulties to seek a better life in Europe. In the courtyard is installed operates Refraction, It composed of a large metallic wing and solar panels, symbol of restriction of freedom.

Inside the Palazzo Strozzi they are on display works from the 80s and 90s to the great work of the recent period with bicycle wheels and stools compositions or portraits made of LEGO of the great dissenters of history, including well known figures of Florentine history, come Galileo e Leonardo.

His relationship between art and political commitment Ai Weiwei says: "Never I separate my art from my other activities. There is a political impact in my work and I do not stop being an artist when I deal with human rights. Everything is art, everything is political”.

The most controversial artist has also prepared two installations which will be located in the Central Market areas of Florence and the Uffizi Gallery.

Cecilia Latches
By the number 127 – Anno III del 28/9/2016

Ai Weiwei "Libero"
Strozzi Palace, until 22 January 2017
Info +39 055 2645155
www.palazzostrozzi.org
Time: Every day 10-20, Thursday, 10-23