Ai Weiwei’s Sanctuary design borrows imagery from a 360-degree wallpaper installation created for the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, titled The Plain Version of the Animal That Looks Like a Llama but Is Really an Alpaca. The work creates a pattern from graphic representations of chains, handcuffs, surveillance cameras, and the Twitter bird—allusions to restrictions on freedom generally, as well as Ai’s own battles with government detention, authoritarianism, and censorship. “The misconception of totalitarianism is that freedom can be imprisoned,” the artist has said. “This is not the case. When you constrain freedom, freedom will take flight and land on a windowsill.”
