Ai Weiwei's first solo show in India was held at Nature Morte in Delhi's Dhan Mill complex.
Bringing Ai Weiwei to India was about exchange, about letting Indian audiences see practices shaped by very different political and cultural experiences, says co-director of Nature Morte
Several works in the exhibition feel consciously placed within an Indian frame.
Walking into Nature Morte at Delhi’s Dhan Mill complex, the first thing that strikes you is not scale or spectacle, but restraint. For Ai Weiwei’s first-ever solo exhibition in India, the gallery presents a tightly held selection, works that span time, materials and geographies, yet remain bound by a persistent inquiry into power, memory and what survives history’s violence.
This is not an attempt to introduce the exiled Chinese dissident artist comprehensively. Instead, it chooses a few of his works and lets them speak. Together, they create a conversation about history, power, memory, and what gets erased over time.
Old Objects, New Silences
One of the first things you notice when you first walk in, is a group of old objects, wooden chairs, vases, and ancient tools, all coated in thick white paint. The paint hides their age, their detail, and their past. This body of work is called Whitewashed Remnants of History of the State of Emerging Future Works.
At first, the objects look clean and uniform. But the longer you stand there, the more uncomfortable they feel. These were once everyday objects, shaped by use and time. Now, they are frozen. In India, white can mean purity, mourning, or official paperwork. Here, it feels like erasure, as if history has been covered up rather than preserved.
Aparajita Jain, co-director of Nature Morte, explained that bringing Ai Weiwei to India was about exchange, about letting Indian audiences see practices shaped by very different political and cultural experiences. “We wanted to create a space where difficult ideas could exist without being simplified,” she said while speaking with Outlook.
Lego, Play, and Political Weight
Moving through the gallery, you encounter Ai Weiwei’s Lego works. From a distance, they look colourful and familiar, almost like something from a child’s room.
These include pieces such as Smudged Mona Lisa, Pollock in Blue, Girl with a pearl earring.
At first glance, the Lego medium feels playful, even disarming. But that playfulness quickly turns uneasy.
For Henna Faqurudheen, a Delhi-based psychotherapist visiting the show, the emotional tension of these pieces lies in their contradictions. “You take something playful like Lego and use it to say something devastating,” pointing to Ai Weiwei’s Surfing (After Hokusai), which reimagines the 1831 Japanese print The Great Wave, one of the most recognisable images in art history, rendered in LEGO.
“That dissonance stays with you. It forces you to sit with what you’d rather scroll past.”
Six traditional blue-and-white Chinese porcelain vases are stacked one above the other to form a tower, each depicting a different facet of refugee life. One shows people in motion, carrying cloth bags on their backs, children walking alongside—some clutching their parents’ hands, others looking around in confusion, trying to make sense of what is happening. Another depicts rows of faceless riot police advancing in formation with shields and batons, as bulldozers and trucks loom across a barren landscape.
By placing images of modern state violence on an object associated with cultural elegance and history, the work underscores the tension between civilisation and coercive power and that's AI Weiwei for you, whose work more than often questions power, authority, and silence, and that is what makes him especially compelling.
Faqurudheen thinks that these scenes of displacement and movement, captured on something as familiar as Chinese porcelain, transform the ornamental into something bodily and urgent.
“You start wondering not just what it depicts,” she said, “but how it was made, and why.”
Another visitor, an art history student from Delhi University who did not wish to be named, noted how Ai repeatedly takes images and objects that already “belong to the world” and reintroduces them through a material that is industrial, modular and mass-produced.
“The engagement with the past is what feels most important,” the student said. “Do we preserve it as something sacred, or do we interfere with it, learn from it, misuse it, even forget it?”
That question appears in works like Coca-Cola Vase, where ancient vessels are marked with symbols of modern consumption. The clash is deliberate and direct, forcing a confrontation between tradition and consumerism.
The exhibition does not shy away from physical or political discomfort. F.U.C.K. (2024), constructed from materials associated with refugee tents, spells its message bluntly. These works do not plead for empathy; they insist on recognition.
India as Context, Not Backdrop
Several works in the exhibition feel consciously placed within an Indian frame. Surya Namaskar, the reimagined Pichwai, a 400-year-old traditional style of intricate painting from Nathdwara, Rajasthan, India, that depicts tales of Lord Krishna, specifically Shrinathji. inspired Lego works, and Ai’s engagement with craft traditions suggest not appropriation but attention.
Jain pointed out that Ai has long been drawn to older civilisations and shared histories, and that India and China, despite political differences, share a depth of cultural time that complicates modern identities.
The decision to choose these specific pieces , Jain said, was to “sprinkle” works across Ai’s practice rather than overwhelm. “He has been making work for over forty years,” Jain said. “You can’t show everything. You have to begin somewhere, with what’s palatable, and what’s possible.”
Ai Weiwei’s work has always carried political charge, but Jain resisted framing the exhibition as provocation for provocation’s sake. “All artists question the establishment,” she said. “That’s when new human thought emerges.”
Visitors echoed this sentiment in quieter ways. One spoke about how art and comedy have become some of the few remaining spaces for truth-telling. Another reflected on how fear of saying the wrong thing, of standing alone shapes public silence. Ai’s work, they suggested, does not eliminate that fear, but exposes it.
