Ai Weiwei - 1000 Anos de Alegrias e Tristezas

In “One Thousand Years of Joys and Sorrows,” Ai Weiwei offers a striking account of China over the past 1,000 years while simultaneously reflecting on his artistic process.

Besides exploring the origins of his extraordinary creativity and his passionate political convictions, Weiwei also reveals the story of his father, Ai Qing, once China’s most influential poet and a close comrade of Mao Zedong. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Ai Qing was considered right-wing and sentenced to forced labor.

His entire family, including his son, was banished to a remote and desolate part of the country they called “Little Siberia.” In his memoirs, Weiwei describes a childhood in exile and recounts the difficult decision to leave his family to study art in the United States, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and found inspiration in Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol.

With honesty and wisdom, he describes his return to China and his rise from unknown artist to star of the international art scene and human rights activist, without forgetting how his work was shaped by his experience under a totalitarian regime.