Ai Weiwei's 'Libero' at Palazzo Strozzi Sparks Debate on Migrant Tragedy as Brand

Ai Weiwei's solo exhibition 'Libero' at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, curated by Arturo Galansino and running until January 22, 2017, features 22 orange lifeboats installed on the Renaissance palace's facade, referencing migrant deaths in the Mediterranean. The show includes works from his 30-year career, such as a serpent of backpacks recalling the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and 3,144 stripped bicycles addressing pollution. The lifeboats echo his 2016 installations at Berlin's Konzerthaus (14,000 life jackets) and Vienna's Belvedere (201 life jacket water lilies). Critic Tomaso Montanari praised the site-specificity and political message, while Francesco Bonami, writing in La Stampa, called the artist 'cunning' and the works 'design objects' devoid of human tragedy. The article questions whether Ai Weiwei's activism has become a brand, noting his global fame, wealth, and 81-day imprisonment in China. It contrasts his polished aesthetic with more radical artists like Tania Bruguera, Santiago Sierra, and Regina José Galindo, arguing that the Florence installation reduces tragedy to decoration. The piece also criticizes Ai Weiwei's 2015 self-portrait as Aylan Kurdi as 'useless, rhetorical, egotistical.'