Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist we often mention on the Sama Gazette. He was arrested at Beijing airport on 3 April, and was held for over two months without any official charges being filed.

Chinese authorities released Ai Weiwei on bail on 22 June 2011, and said the artist had allegedly evaded taxes and intentionally destroyed accounting documents.

You can read on Wikipedia:

Analysts and other activists said Ai had been widely thought to be untouchable, but Nicholas Bequelin from Human Rights Watch suggested that his arrest, calculated to send the message that no one would be immune, must have had the approval of someone in the top leadership. International governments, human rights groups and art institutions, among others, have called for Ai’s release, while Chinese officials have yet to notify Ai’s family of his whereabouts. State media started describing Wei as a ‘deviant and a plagiarist’ in early 2011. The China Daily subsidiary, the Global Times editorial on 6 April 2011 attacked Wei, saying “Ai Weiwei likes to do something ‘others dare not do.’ He has been close to the red line of Chinese law. Objectively speaking, Chinese society does not have much experience in dealing with such persons. However, as long as Ai Weiwei continuously marches forward, he will inevitably touch the red line one day.”

Ai Weiwei is taking risks as an activist in China. We wish the country let his artists and intellectuals use freedom of speech. It is a weakness not to allow them to do so, not a proof of strength. We support Ai Weiwei and now he is out of prison, we hope he will be still strong enough to create and inspire us!

Below: Installation for the ‘Remembering’ exhibition on Haus der Kunst’s façade, in Munich, Germany (2010). It was made out of 9000 children’s backpacks and they spell out the sentence ‘She lived happily for seven years in this world’ in Chinese characters. This is a quote from a mother whose child died in the Sichuan earthquake in 2008.

Note that you can also find more information on this Artsy’s Ai Weiwei page.