Aviva Studios to host 24-hour live performance piece by Ai Weiwei

A unique 24-hour performance piece by artist and activist Ai Weiwei comes to Aviva Studios this July.

Running across Fri 3 Jul – Sat 4 Jul, Sewing a Button will give audiences an unflinching look at Ai Weiwei’s secret detention by Public Security in China in 2011 and is the first time the artist has reenacted his experience.

The performance coincides with Ai Weiwei: Button Up! the largest site-specific exhibition by the artist, on show at Aviva Studios from Thu 2 Jul – Sun 6 Sep.

Sewing a Button marks the 15^th anniversary of Ai Weiwei’s secret detention by Public Security for 81 days in 2011.  A recreation of the cell in which the artist was detained will sit in the Hall at Aviva Studios, measuring 7.2m by 3.6m.

Starting at 5pm on the Friday, audiences are invited to witness the artist’s experience across a single night and day, bookable in two-hour slots.  Audience members will be able to watch Ai Weiwei sleep, eat, exercise, write, wash and be interrogated. They will also be able to observe Weiwei, like the guards could, through footage from 3 CCTV cameras set up in the Hall.

Elements of the footage will be shown in screens around Aviva Studios, as well as broadcast online to reach audiences around the world.

Ai Weiwei: Button Up! explores the legacies of British imperialism, Chinese and British relations and the rise of globalisation. The exhibition will feature two major new commissions created especially for the vast space of the Warehouse: Eight-Nation Alliance Flags is a collection of flags which were made in Ai Weiwei’s studio in China, each comprising of half a million buttons; and a new iteration of History of Bombs, a mural made from over a million toy bricks which will be the largest toy brick artwork by Ai Weiwei.

The new commissions will sit alongside large-scale works by the artist which are going on show in the UK for the first time: Law of the Journey (2017), a 47m long inflatable migrant boat containing hundreds of human figures and the artist’s largest artwork to date; Wang Family Ancestral Hall (2015), a Ming dynasty ancestral temple reassembled from 1,500 individual wooden pieces; and La Commedia Umana (2017-21), a black Murano glass chandelier made up of over 2,000 pieces and weighing nearly 3 tonnes.

Throughout the summer, the Social in Aviva Studios will be turned into a Chinese Tea Room, with visitors being able to sit on traditional Chinese mazha stools.  A series of events and workshops will accompany the exhibition, including an artist talk on Thu 2 Jul. For full listings, head to the Factory International website.