Ai Weiwei will restage one of the most defining moments of his life this summer, presenting a stark 24-hour performance at Aviva Studios that revisits his secret detention in China.
Titled Sewing a Button, the work unfolds from 3rd–4th July 2026 and marks the first time Weiwei has re-enacted his 81-day detention by Chinese authorities in 2011. Presented inside a full-scale reconstruction of his prison cell, the performance offers an unfiltered, durational portrait of surveillance, control and endurance.
Measuring 7.2 by 3.6 metres, the recreated cell will sit within the vast Hall at Aviva Studios. Over the course of a single night and day, visitors will witness the artist’s daily routines — sleeping, eating, exercising, writing and washing — alongside staged interrogations. The experience mirrors the conditions of his detention, where constant observation was part of the psychological architecture of confinement.
Audiences can enter in timed slots across the 24 hours, while CCTV-style footage — captured by three cameras installed within the cell — will be broadcast across the venue and online, extending the work beyond its physical setting. Watching becomes part of the piece itself: a quiet echo of the surveillance Weiwei endured.
The performance coincides with Ai Weiwei: Button Up!, a major exhibition opening at Aviva Studios on 2 July and running until 6 September 2026. Together, the projects position the artist’s practice between personal testimony and global politics.
Spanning the Warehouse space, the exhibition brings together new commissions and monumental works, exploring themes of imperial history, migration and globalisation. Among the highlights are Eight-Nation Alliance Flags, a series of densely constructed banners made from half a million buttons each, and a new iteration of History of Bombs, composed from over a million toy bricks.
These sit alongside some of Weiwei’s most recognisable large-scale works, including Law of the Journey (2017), a 47-metre-long inflatable boat filled with faceless figures; Wang Family Ancestral Hall (2015), a dismantled and reconstructed Ming dynasty temple; and La Commedia Umana (2017–21), a monumental Murano glass chandelier suspended as a dark, theatrical centrepiece. Also on view is Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (2010), the artist’s reworking of traditional Chinese zodiac figures.
For the duration of the performance, the exhibition will remain open around the clock — a rare extension that allows audiences to experience both works in a continuous temporal loop.
Elsewhere in the building, the Social space will be transformed into a Chinese tea room, extending the exhibition into a more contemplative register, while talks and public programmes will unfold across the summer.
Together, Sewing a Button and Button Up! form a layered presentation of Weiwei’s practice — one rooted in lived experience, but scaled to address the systems that shape it.
Sewing a Button 5PM on 3rd July – 5PM on 4th July 2026, The Hall, Aviva Studios factoryinternational.org
Tickets from £15; 24-hour ticket £68. Includes exhibition entry. Concessions and limited Aviva £10 tickets available
Ai Weiwei: Button Up!, 2nd July–6th September 2026, The Warehouse, Aviva Studios
Tickets from £15 Concessions and limited Aviva £10 tickets available
