After 600 Days of ‘With Flowers,’ Ai Weiwei Has His Passport Back

As a fan of Ai Weiwei’s work, enjoyed this profile and the news that he has his passport back:

On Wednesday morning, as he has every day for the past year and a half, Ai Weiwei placed a bouquet of flowers in the basket of a bicycle that stands outside his studio in Beijing. The selection included carnations and baby’s breath. The day before, he’d picked sunflowers. He started the week with lilies.

For more than a year and a half, China’s infamous dissident artist has arranged his blooms in a daily demonstration against the confiscation of his passport. Titled With Flowers, the work is part-protest, part-performance art. But no longer: After four years, the artist announced via Instagram on Wednesday that the Chinese government had returned his passport. Since 2011, after Ai was arrested on charges of tax evasion, jailed for 81 days, and then released, the government had kept it confiscated, and refused him any other travel papers.

With Flowers endured for about 600 days. Ai started the performance on November 13, 2013, more than two years into his confinement. The demonstration serves as an extraordinary record of his confinement: He placed the flowers outside the aquamarine door at 258 Caochangdi, home to his art studio as well as his design and architecture firm, FAKE Design. They were mighty arrangements, rarely modest, all formally documented on Flickr. Ai is both active and savvy on social media (which is part of what prompted his trouble with the authorities), and his flowers traveled far beyond the plastic basket on his black Giant bike via posts on Flickr, Instagram, and Twitter.

After 600 Days of ‘With Flowers,’ Ai Weiwei Has His Passport Back – The Atlantic.