Ai spent his entire childhood in exile. “This left a huge shadow on me,” he says in the film. But that shadow grew, eventually engulfing him and becoming the catalyst for a life devoted to art and activism.

Ai Weiwei says Hong Kong protests part of global freedom struggle

At a particularly urgent and volatile time in US history, one seeing prolific protests and a nationwide reckoning over systemic racism in this country – not to mention a devastating global pandemic – we turned to the artist for his thoughts on, well, the current state of things.

Ai Weiwei: Yours Truly is about the exhibition on Alcatraz. But it’s also about the persecution of your father and your childhood in exile. How did growing up under those circumstances shape you as a human-rights activist?

My early childhood was spent with my father, Ai Qing, a national poet punished by the state, sent into exile in China’s northwest, and forced into manual labour. He was ordered to clean the most primitive latrines. I watched him stand in front of that [dirty] hole each day and that formed my consciousness of humanity and aesthetics. The particular moment [of awakening as an activist] lasted years.

My experience is not unique in China. There is a long history of countless writers and intellectuals who were put in jail, exiled or who simply disappeared. Today, anyone who dares to question the authority of the party or who state their belief in freedom of speech or in human rights could face the same consequences.

I know that struggling and fighting will not necessarily achieve progressive social change, but it is necessary for my existence and gives light to life itself. Often, for that humble reason, one can lose their life.

You moved from Berlin to Britain last year. Where are you living, what’s it like there and how has the pandemic affected your life, personally?

I moved from Berlin to Cambridge. The reason for the move was to accompany my son for his continuing education. I still have a studio in Berlin.

The pandemic does not affect my life at all. I have long experienced “social distancing”, since I was born the son of an enemy of the state. I have lived in detention and soft detention, placed under surveillance, watched and followed like a social disease in China.

In the West, I’m a foreigner. I can easily experience more foreignness in my ideas than my social status in this society. That might take a lifetime to adjust [to], maybe it cannot be changed.

Life is so comfortable in the English garden that is Cambridge, where the weather has been beautiful this spring, and I have no complaints.

This past spring, you designed more than 22,000 masks featuring imagery from your work – sunflower seeds and an upright middle finger – with the proceeds going to coronavirus relief. Tell us about meeting the moment with art.

The idea is small, almost not worth mentioning, but I tested it during a most dramatic, historical moment. Too often, moments like this lack initiative and action. I am happy with the result and the great response from the public, which has made the project meaningful and will support many vulnerable people, including those long forgotten such as the refugees.

As an artist, my true struggle is to answer the call of the moment, to respond with my effort and become a part of it. It is endless, but that’s fate.

What do you think about how China handled information around the virus outbreak?

After the first patients were diagnosed, China covered it up and for quite some time gave misleading information about the nature of the disease. The authorities also cracked down on doctors that released information about the new disease. As a consequence, this gave the possibility for the disease to quickly spread. As people filtered out of Wuhan, [it furthered] the possibility for this to spread around the world.

The next effort that China made was a military-style lockdown of this city of [more than] 10 million people. The effect of the control was very efficient and it stopped the disease from further spreading, but we still do not know the real number of those infected and those that have died. China is very good in keeping secrets.

What happened in China is not just about the pandemic. It raises the question of whether the West can continue to see China as a partner without basic transparency and trust in its political structure. This struggle will last longer than the disease itself. It is painful, but has become necessary. China stands as a challenge to the West, not just economically but with cultural and social differences and conflicts in ideology.

What are you working on now, what’s next?

During this lockdown period, my studio has finished the production and post-production work for three films, which will come out very soon. One of the films is about the Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where over 1 million refugees reside. It is about their existence and struggle.

The second film is about the uprising in Hong Kong last year. We have seen the result with China tightening its control, which will transform Hong Kong into just another Chinese city. The last film is the one we started last but have finished first. This film is about the pandemic in Wuhan. I cannot tell you more at this time.