Ai Weiwei's First Design Exhibition at London's Design Museum

Ai Weiwei's first design-focused exhibition, 'Ai Weiwei: Making Sense', will open in spring 2023 at the Design Museum in London. Curated by Justin McGuirk, the show presents the artist's work through the lens of architecture and design, featuring site-specific installations and sculptures that explore tensions between past and present, hand and machine, precious and worthless, construction and destruction. Highlights include three giant marble and glass toilet paper rolls reflecting on consumerism during the pandemic, and a Lego 'field' using bricks donated after the company cut supplies in 2015 over his political prisoner portraits. The exhibition also includes historical Chinese artifacts and Lego works. McGuirk emphasizes the show is not about presenting Ai as a designer but using his practice to reflect on design and architecture. Ai has long engaged with architecture, notably collaborating with Herzog & de Meuron on the 2012 Serpentine Pavilion. The Design Museum, founded by Sir Terence Conran in 1989 and redesigned by John Pawson, is located at 224-238 Kensington High Street.