[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2234619706.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the 15 years since his 81-day detention by China\u2019s Ministry of Public Security, artist and dissident artist Ai Weiwei has explicitly addressed the harrowing experience in his work. This summer, he will do so again, in what will likely be the most demanding presentation to date.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs part of his site-specific exhibition called \u201cButton Up!\u201d at Factory International\u2019s Aviva Studios in Manchester, England, Ai will present Sewing a Button<\/em>, a 24-hour performance piece in which he will reenact his detention. The performance will activate a re-creation of Ai\u2019s cell, which measured 7.2 meters by 3.6 meters (about 23.6 feet by 11.8 feet).<\/p>\n Sewing a Button<\/em>, scheduled to start at 5 p.m. on July 3 and running until July 4, will take place the day after the opening of \u201cButton Up!\u201d on July 2. Visitors will be able to book two-hour slots, as well as a full 24-hour ticket that allows them to come and go, to see the performance. (Some of the footage will also be broadcast online.)<\/p>\n Sewing a Button <\/em>will involve watching Ai \u201csleep, eat, exercise, write, wash and be interrogated,\u201d as well as \u201cobserve Weiwei, like the guards could, through footage from 3 CCTV cameras,\u201d according to a release.<\/p>\n Sewing a Button<\/em> is in many ways a follow-up to Ai\u2019s acclaimed work S.A.C.R.E.D.<\/em> (2013), which he debuted at the Zuecca Project Space in Venice during the 2013 Biennale and which has since traveled internationally. For that work, Ai created six different dioramas that re-created his time in detention, featuring fiberglass sculptures of the artist and his guards. The work\u2019s title refers to each of the six tableaux he made for the work: \u00a0Supper, Accusers, Cleansing, Ritual, Entropy, Doubt.<\/p>\n \n\tThat same year, he also released a heavy-metal music video about his detention titled Dumbass<\/em>, which he described to the Guardian<\/em> at the time as \u201ca kind of self-therapy.\u201d The work, he told the New York Times<\/em>, is \u201cnot really about me. I think it\u2019s about how the power of the state tries to manage and maintain this kind of control.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn addition to Sewing a Button<\/em>, Factory International has commissioned two other works by Ai: Eight-Nation Alliance Flags<\/em>, a collection of flags made up of buttons, and a new version of History of Bombs<\/em>, a mural made up of toy bricks. These works join several other large-scale works, some of which are being shown in the UK for the first time: Law of the Journey<\/em> (2017), Wang Family Ancestral Hall<\/em> (2015), La Commedia Umana<\/em> (2017\u201321), and Circle of Animals\/Zodiac Heads<\/em> (2010).<\/p>\n \n\tThe exhibition, according to a description, \u201cconfronts 200 years of power, trade, war, culture and Empire that have shaped relations between Britain and China,\u201d while Sewing a Button<\/em> \u201cdistils these forces into a frighteningly intimate human story.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/ai-weiwei-24-hour-performance-factory-international-1234782448\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2234619706.jpg?w=1024″] In the 15 years since his 81-day detention by China\u2019s Ministry of Public Security, artist and dissident artist Ai Weiwei has explicitly addressed the harrowing experience in his work. This summer, he will do so again, in what will likely be the most demanding presentation to date. As part of his site-specific […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1900366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1900366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1900366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1900366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1900366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}