An autobiography in pictures: photographs taken by Ai Weiwei that capture his emergence as the uniquely provocative artist that he is today.
Ai Weiwei: Beijing Photographs 1993–2003 is an autobiography in pictures. Ai Weiwei is China's most celebrated contemporary artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. In April 2011, when Ai disappeared into police custody for three months, he quickly became the art world's most famous missing person. Since then, Ai Weiwei's critiques of China's repressive regime have ranged from playful photographs of his raised middle finger in front of Tiananmen Square to searing memorials to the more than 5,000 schoolchildren who died in shoddy government construction in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Against a backdrop of strict censorship, Ai has become a hero on social media to millions of Chinese citizens. 
This book, prohibited from publication in China, offers an intimate look at Ai Weiwei's world in the years after his return from New York and preceding his imprisonment and global superstardom. The photographs capture Ai's emergence as the uniquely provocative artist that he is today. There is no more revealing portrait of Ai Weiwei's life in China than this.
The book contains more than 600 carefully sequenced images culled from an archive of more than 40,000 photographs taken by Ai: a narrative arc carefully shaped by an artist keenly aware of photography's ability to tell stories. It includes a shattering series of photographs taken between 1993 and 1996 devoted to the final illness and death of Ai's father Ai Qing. The book is a sequel to Ai Weiwei: New York 1983–1993, a privately published book that collected photographs taken by Ai during his years on the New York art scene.

Ai Weiwei: Beijing Photographs, 1993-2003 (Mit Press)

Arts & Photography

Tancock, John

WEIWEI, Ai

Tung, Stephanie H.

History & Criticism

The MIT Press

Wang Tiande's new Digital series has nothing to do with the latest technology; in fact, it harks back to the most ancient Chinese arts of ink-and-wash painting and calligraphy, of which he calls "the most value-laden of Chinese art forms." Handmade Xuan paper, one of the most expensive rice papers, provides the material for inscriptions, on which further meaning is layered with abstract forms burned into the surface. For Wang's Chinese Clothes series, he applies similar calligraphic gestures and burn marks to silk robes. This catalogue includes an essay by John Tancock, Senior Vice President of at Sotheby's, and a statement by the artist. Edited by Christophe Mao. Essay by John Tancock. Paperback, 8.25 x 11.25 in./78 pgs / 61 color and 36 b&w.

Made by Tiande: Works by Wang Tiande

Tiande, Wang

Mao, Christophe

Individual Artists

Chambers Fine Art Llc

Artist, designer, architect, author, publisher, and curator: Ai Weiwei (b. 1957) is a truly 21st–century creative, influential across a variety of media. During his childhood, criticism of his father’s poetry—he was labeled as a dissident—meant that Ai and his family were exiled to a remote region of China for 16 years. Following the death of Chairman Mao, Ai left to train as an artist in Beijing and New York. Ai is today an artist of global stature, and his strong social conscience has galvanized a generation of Chinese artists. With works that touch on topics such as imprisonment, borders, and disaster, Ai has often found himself in conflict with the Chinese authorities. Ai Weiwei is published to coincide with a major exhibition at the Royal Academy in London—the largest showing of Ai’s work to date. This volume includes installations and artworks specially created for the exhibition, an interview with Ai by Tim Marlow, and contributions from a team of scholars, analyzing the variety of Ai’s output and concerns.

Ai Weiwei

Marlow, Tim

Rosbottom, Daniel

Locke, Adrian

Royal Academy Publications

Duchamp and/or/in China investigates the impact of Duchamp on contemporary Chinese art. It includes a pull-out section of his best-known works. Among the artists included here are Ai Weiwei, Cai Yuan + Xi Jian Jun, Huang Yong Ping, Zhao Zhao and Zheng Guogu.

Duchamp and/or/in China

Ullens Center for Contemporary Art/Hinabook/World Publishing Company, Beijing

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