Ai Weiwei's Major Exhibition in São Paulo Confronts Resistance and Brazilian Culture

Ai Weiwei's expansive exhibition occupies the entire Oca building in São Paulo's Ibirapuera Park, tracing his decades-long trajectory of challenging hegemonic discourse. The show includes notable works and new interventions conceived from his encounter with Brazilian landscape and culture, reconciling universal issues like freedom of expression and refugee persecution with personal themes. Weiwei's provocative use of his own image appears in over 200 ex-votos commissioned from Ceará artisans, replacing his typical Chinese ceramics with Northeastern Brazilian woodcarving. A compelling video intertwines the making of a nude plaster self-portrait with the monumental modeling of a 30-meter tall pequi-vinagreiro tree from the Amazon, with Weiwei stating 'This tree is me.' The exhibition features his 2008 installation 'Reto,' made from 164 tons of steel rebars from collapsed Sichuan schools, alongside works like his hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds originally created for London's Tate Gallery. Weiwei, influenced by Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol during his New York years (1981-1993), employs high technology, photography, and video to give symbolic character to singular objects. The artist, who avoids being framed as a visual artist, says the only possible position for an individual in our world is that of a poet, like his father Ai Qing who was denounced as an enemy of the regime and exiled for 16 years.