Offbeat | With passport returned, Ai Weiwei attends London exhibition

It was an unexpected photo opportunity, as Ai Weiwei stood inside London’s Royal Academy of Arts yesterday surrounded by 20 years’ worth of his artworks.
The Chinese artist is world famous for works addressing human rights abuses, official corruption and the collision between Chinese culture and Western consumerism. But in his homeland, he has been imprisoned, put under house arrest and barred from international travel.
In July, Chinese officials unexpectedly returned Ai’s passport after four years, allowing him to visit Britain for the opening of the academy’s major retrospective show.
“We didn’t think he’d come,” said Royal Academy artistic director Tim Marlow, who co-curated the exhibition. “We thought eventually he might be able to travel, but it could have been months, years. As it happened, it was weeks.”
There was one further snag when the British Embassy in Beijing turned down Ai’s request for a six-month business visa, giving him a shorter visa instead, on the grounds that he had failed to disclose a criminal conviction. Ai was jailed for almost three months in 2011 amid a wider crackdown on dissent, but wasn’t charged with a crime.
After a media uproar over what Marlow calls “a national embarrassment,” British Home Secretary Theresa May overturned the embassy’s refusal.
Marlow hopes the show, which opens to the public Saturday and runs to Dec. 13, will “let the art speak louder” than Ai’s political woes.