After four years of soft detention for Ai Weiwei’s social and political activism, the Chinese authorities have returned the artist’s passport. Ai Weiwei broke the news on Instagram today with a selfie brandishing the travel document. “Today, I picked up my passport,” he wrote in a caption.
The passport was confiscated in March 2011 when the artist was detained for 81 days accused of subverting state power, and since his release, he has been living under the watch of security cameras installed outside his Beijing studio. This has done little to discourage him from establishing a reputation as a fierce critic and political commentator, and in peaceful protest against government restrictions on his freedom to travel, every morning for the last 600 days he has placed fresh flowers in the basket of a bicycle outside his studio.
Best known for his postmodern installations fusing eastern and western culture, including the millions of hand-painted ceramic sunflower seeds that filled the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, recently Ai Weiwei’s work has been celebrated more than ever in a spate of one-man shows he has often helped curate remotely.
The welcome news comes just ahead of his show at the Royal Academy here in London, due to open in September.