From this week a seven-meter-high installation entitled Gilded Cage, by the exiled Chinese artist and human rights campaigner Ai Weiwei (艾未未), will be on display at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. The piece, originally constructed for Central Park in New York in 2017, was made as a reflection on the worldwide refugee crisis. Ai, 64, is currently based in Lisbon. This conversation took place last week by phone.
<strong>
Tim Adams: Tell me a little bit about Gilded Cage. How did it come about?
Ai Weiwei:</strong> I made it not long after I came out of China after four or five years of detention.
Keep track of competitors, market trends, and policy changes with sector specific email bulletins
Live email alerts from
New project leads and business prospects every week through the
landscape leads service
Unveiled on Wednesday in the grounds of Winston Churchill’s Oxfordshire birthplace
, it is expected
on long-term view in the palace gardens.
The artwork previously stood at the gates of New York City’s Central Park after it was put on display there in 2017, its prison-like fences jarring intentionally with the beautiful surroundings.
Ai Weiwei, 63, moved to Britain from Germany in 2019 and has long highlighted the plight of refugees and migrants in his artwork.
In March he said he planned to stay
in Portugal long term while keeping a base in the UK and a studio in Berlin. The sculpture is going on long-term display in the grounds of Blenheim Palace. Getty Images
Tino Sehgal will be the eighth contemporary artist to show at Blenheim Palace Photo: Wolfgang Tillmans
This summer the artist Tino Sehgal will bring his celebrated brand of “live art” to the grandiose setting of Blenheim Palace, the 18th-century stately home located in Oxfordshire, with a solo exhibition designed specifically for the estate’s park and gardens (9 July-15 August). His practice takes the form of “constructed situations” involving live encounters between visitors and those enacting his work.
“Akin to a swarm or flock, the group of participants the majority of whom are local residents cast specially for this project will gather and disperse in a fluid and porous choreography, enacting moments of connection with visitors and their surroundings,” says a press statement.