Ai Weiwei — The Papercut Portfolio (2019)

Ai Weiwei (Beijing, 1957) is among the most recognizable figures of contemporary art: artist, architect and activist whose practice moves between sculpture, installation, photography and video, always carrying a symbolic and conceptual charge. His works are held in the permanent collections of MoMA, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou and the Guggenheim, and his research on memory, power and individual freedom has made him a central voice in the debate between art, politics and civil rights.

The Papercut Portfolio, published by Taschen in 2019, takes a technique deeply rooted in Chinese tradition and turns it into conceptual language. Eight papercuts, each signed in pencil and numbered, are presented as loose sheets, each held in its own envelope inside the original red fabric portfolio with shell clasp: a structure that keeps the tension between the individual sheet and the whole, a recurring theme in the artist's work.

The compositions work on void and fullness — the two terms of papercut — exploring history, culture and freedom of expression through an apparently simple gesture. This example is numbered 132 from an edition of 250, with 24 artist's proofs.