The Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei opens his first solo exhibition in India today at Nature Morte gallery in New Delhi. From January 15 to February 22, 2026, the untitled exhibition at The Dhan Mill complex in Chhattarpur presents works spanning over four decades of artistic practice.
A Provocateur’s Philosophy
Ai Weiwei approaches art not as an act of beauty-making, but as an instrument of resistance. As he has said, “I’m the kind of person who makes trouble, but in a smart way.” This philosophy permeates everything he does. His career, punctuated by 81 days of solitary confinement in 2011, a police beating that required emergency brain surgery, and years of surveillance and censorship, has crystallized his conviction that art and activism are inseparable. “Freedom of expression is a very essential condition for me to make any art,” he has stated. “Also, it is an essential value for my life. I have to protect this right.”
A Dozen Works, Thirty Years of Practice
Despite containing only a dozen artworks, the Delhi exhibition constitutes a comprehensive statement. “Although there are only a dozen of my artworks,” Ai explained in a statement, “it covers several key points that trace more than 20—and almost 30—years of my creative activity.”
The works on display span multiple mediums and conceptual frameworks, each one engaging with themes of cultural memory, political violence, and the circulation of images. The exhibition demonstrates how Ai has continuously bridged ancient history and contemporary realities, using varied materials to address urgent global concerns.
The Lego Provocations
Central to the exhibition are Ai’s celebrated Lego compositions, monumental pixel-like surfaces created by interlocking colored bricks to reference art history, political events, portraits, and moments of collective memory. These are not nostalgic celebrations of childhood; they are sophisticated interrogations of how images circulate and mutate through mass reproduction and commodification.
Surfing (After Hokasai) reimagines the Japanese ukiyo-e master’s iconic 1831 print The Great Wave, while Water Lilies reinterprets Claude Monet’s celebrated triptych of the same name. For his India debut, Ai has created new Lego compositions inspired by Pichwai, the devotional cloth paintings rooted in Hindu religious traditions as well as homages to Indian modernist painters V.S. Gaitonde and S.H. Raza.
Art as the Site of Last Words
For Ai Weiwei, the stakes of artistic practice are existential. He does not see art as a decorative pursuit or a commodity to be exchanged in market spaces (though his works are for sale in this exhibition). Rather, he understands art as what endures when everything else is taken away.
“My definition of art has always been the same,” he has insisted. “It is about freedom of expression, a new way of communication. It is never about exhibiting in museums or about hanging it on the wall.” This Delhi exhibition is not a retrospective in the conventional sense—it is a statement of continued practice, a demonstration that despite imprisonment, surveillance, and exile, the work continues.
“The art always wins,” he has stated simply. “Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay.”
A Conversation in Real Time
Aparajita Jain, co-director of Nature Morte, has described the exhibition’s significance in terms that resonate with India’s own cultural and political landscape. “Bringing Ai’s work to India isn’t about creating a spectacle—for us, it is about urgency,” she said. “His work speaks to the present moment with total clarity: history, power, borders, memory. India is a place where these questions are lived, not abstract, and this exhibition invites that conversation without flinching.”
Peter Nagy, also co-director of Nature Morte, added: “Ai Weiwei has an unmatched ability to hold the ancient and the contemporary in the same frame—craft and critique, beauty and blunt truth. Presenting his first solo show in India feels both overdue and essential, especially now, when the politics of images, movement, and belonging are shaping lives everywhere—including here.”
The Politics of Arrival
Ai Weiwei’s presence in India comes at a moment when questions of freedom of expression, state power, and artistic autonomy are urgently contested.
The exhibition is presented through a collaboration between Nature Morte and Galleria Continua, with all works available for sale, several having been pre-sold in advance of the opening. This is not an exhibition about past triumphs; it is an active intervention in present conversations about what art can do, what it must do, when institutional power attempts to silence voices and erase histories.
Ai Weiwei: First Solo Exhibition in India
Nature Morte, The Dhan Mill, Chhattarpur, New Delhi
January 15—February 22, 2026
Athmaja Biju is the Editor at Abir Pothi. She is a Translator and Writer working on Visual Culture.
