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Among the works on display are security surveillance cameras,
a pushchair and giant blades of grass, all carved out of marble,
and a massive rolled-out map of China made of wood salvaged from
dismantled temples.
Another room is hung with wallpaper with the repeated motif of a
forearm and hand, with the middle finger up in the universally
rude gesture.
Wallpaper in an adjoining room shows handcuffs and the Twitter
social-media-site bird logo surrounded by CCTV cameras, all done
in gold on a white background.
"We are expecting a lot of visitors to this show and as you can
see, the spaces at the Academy I think have been brilliantly
used by Ai Weiwei," Tim Marlow, the Academy's Artistic Director,
said during a press tour on Tuesday.
Ai was unable to leave China for four years after his passport
was confiscated at the airport when he was preparing to fly out
of the country in April 2011. He was detained for 81 days after
which he was released into a form of house arrest.
He worked with the Academy staff on the retrospective over the
Internet and by phone, and through visits by curators to his
home in Beijing.
When his passport was returned in July he was able to visit
Berlin, where his son and partner live, and London to put the
finishing touches to the exhibition.
At a press conference last Friday, Ai criticized the British
government for not joining other nations including the United
States, Canada, France, Germany and Australia, whose ambassadors
he said had met with him in Beijing.
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"I never met a British ambassador," he said. "They quite
avoid to touch the issues relating to things which disturb."
Ai is not shy in dealing with politically sensitive matters in
his work. One of the Academy's huge rooms contains his work
"Straight" (2008-12), which comprises 96 tonnes of rebar concrete
reinforcing rods collected from shoddy buildings that collapsed
during the Sichuan earthquake of May, 2008, all carefully
straightened and aligned on the floor.
On the walls are engraved the names of the thousands of victims.
The Academy says this is the largest British retrospective of Ai's
work and includes pieces that have been seen before, notably at the
Venice Biennale.
But even though Ai's passport has been returned, Marlow said he did
not foresee a similar show in China anytime soon.
"I would imagine that if this work tried to be shipped back to China
to be shown, there would be obviously no chance of that," he said.
(Additional reporting by Georgina Cooper; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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