Ai Weiwei: Button Up!

Ai Weiwei brings one of his most ambitious exhibitions to date, turning his focus to 200 years of Chinese and British history and the systems that have shaped both nations. Drawing a clear line from the Industrial Revolution through to today, the exhibition uses Manchester’s own past as a starting point to explore how trade, empire and exploitation still echo in modern political and humanitarian crises.

Working across sculpture, installation, film and architecture, Ai Weiwei builds an immersive environment filled with large-scale works made from porcelain, cotton, glass, bronze and even toy bricks and buttons. New pieces created specifically for the show sit alongside major works never before seen in the UK, including a vast inflatable migrant boat, a reconstructed Ming dynasty temple and an enormous glass chandelier made up of thousands of individual components.

There’s a balance throughout between the personal and the global, with the exhibition’s title offering a subtle nod to censorship while the works themselves confront issues of migration, power and control head on. It’s a bold, unfiltered look at the forces that continue to shape the world now, and a reminder of how art can still challenge, provoke and cut through the noise.