
While With Wind used natural and mythical imagery to reference the global reality of political detainment, this installation at the rear of the New Industries Building gave that reality a human face — or many individual faces. The viewer was confronted with a field of colorful images laid out flat across the expanse of the floor: portraits of 176 people from around the world who have been imprisoned or exiled because of their beliefs or affiliations, most of whom were still incarcerated at the time the artwork was made. Ai Weiwei has called them “heroes of our time.”
If the sheer number of individuals represented is overwhelming, the impression is compounded by the intricacy of the work’s construction: each image was built by hand from LEGO bricks. (Some portions of the artwork were assembled in the artist’s studio, while others were fabricated to the artist’s specifications by more than 80 volunteers in San Francisco.) Assembling a multitude of small parts into a vast and complex whole, the work may have brought to mind the relationship between the individual and the collective, a central dynamic in any society and a particularly charged one in contemporary China.
See designs for the portraits and learn about the people represented below. Ai Weiwei selected these individuals based on information provided by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, as well as independent research by the artist’s studio and the FOR-SITE Foundation. Initial research was completed in June 2014 and was updated in April 2017 for the Hirshhorn’s exhibition Ai Weiwei: Trace at Hirshhorn (June 28, 2017 – January 1, 2018). For more information about prisoners of conscience, visit the Amnesty International website.
- Azerbaijan (9)
- Bahrain (15)
- Belarus (2)
- Burma (2)
- Cameroon (1)
- China (38)
- Cuba (1)
- Egypt (3)
- Eritrea (2)
- Ethiopia (5)
- Gambia (3)
- India (1)
- Indonesia (3)
- Iran (26)
- Iraq (1)
- Kazakhstan (2)
- Kuwait (1)
- Kyrgyzstan (1)
- Laos (3)
- North Korea (3)
- Qatar (1)
- Russia (9)
- Rwanda (1)
- Saudi Arabia (5)
- South Africa (1)
- Sudan (1)
- Syria (1)
- Thailand (1)
- Turkmenistan (1)
- United Arab Emirates (5)
- United States (6)
- Uzbekistan (6)
- Vietnam (16)
Azerbaijan
Bahrain
Belarus
Burma
Cameroon
China
Cuba
Egypt
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Gambia
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Kazakhstan
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
North Korea
Qatar
Russia
Rwanda
Saudi Arabia
South Africa
Sudan
Syria
Thailand
Turkmenistan
United Arab Emirates
United States
Uzbekistan
Vietnam
Ai Weiwei is a Beijing-based artist and activist whose work encompasses sculpture, installation, photography, film, architecture, curation, and social criticism. His art has been featured in major solo exhibitions including Ai Weiwei at Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, UK, 2014; Evidence at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 2014; and Ai Weiwei: According to What?, which was organized by the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, in 2009, and traveled to North American venues in 2013–14. Ai collaborated with architects Herzog & de Meuron on the “bird’s nest” stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award in 2015.
@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz is presented by the FOR-SITE Foundation in partnership with the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

Support for the exhibition is provided by Roger Evans and Aey Phanachet, the Fisher family, and other generous donors.