The artist will transform surveillance, confinement and memory into a live global event.
Buenos Aires, June 2026
Arthaus will participate in the international broadcast of Sewing a Button, a 24-hour performance in which Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei will recreate part of the secret detention he endured in China in 2011. The work will be performed at Aviva Studios in Manchester from July 3 to July 4 and transmitted simultaneously to selected cultural venues around the world. Buenos Aires audiences will be able to follow the closed-circuit images at Arthaus, turning the Argentine institution into one of the project’s international viewing points.
The performance marks the first time Ai Weiwei will reenact his imprisonment personally and continuously in real time. He will enter a reconstruction of the cell where he was held for 81 days by Chinese public security authorities. The space measures approximately 25.9 square meters and was designed by the international architecture firm Hawkins\Brown from the artist’s detailed memories. Inside it, Ai will sleep, eat, write, wash, exercise and undergo simulated interrogations.
Nine performers will portray guards and medical personnel, reproducing the atmosphere of constant observation that characterized his detention. Four journalists and writers will question him about personal, political and philosophical subjects. Their participation will turn the reconstruction into more than a literal representation of prison life. It will become a sustained examination of power, memory, obedience and the psychological consequences of being watched without interruption.
The title Sewing a Button refers to a minor but emotionally charged episode from Ai’s confinement. During his detention, he reportedly spent weeks without a functioning button to keep his trousers properly fastened. A guard eventually provided him with a needle and thread so he could repair them. The simple act became a symbol of dignity, dependency and survival inside a system designed to control even the smallest aspects of daily existence.
The performance will begin at 5 p.m. in Manchester and continue without interruption for an entire day. Audiences at Aviva Studios will enter through two-hour viewing sessions, while a limited number of spectators will hold passes allowing access throughout the complete 24-hour period. The venue will remain open overnight for the first time in its history. A traditional Chinese tea house and parallel activities will accompany the performance.
Those unable to attend in person will watch through live closed-circuit footage. Arthaus in Buenos Aires, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne and screens in London’s Piccadilly Circus are among the locations scheduled to receive the transmission. Factory International will also stream the images through its digital platform. The global distribution transforms the original surveillance system into a public artistic network.
In 2011, Ai Weiwei was detained at Beijing Capital International Airport while attempting to travel abroad. His family was not informed of his location, and he remained confined for 81 days without formal charges being presented during that period. Chinese authorities later referred to alleged tax violations involving a company connected to his studio. His supporters and international human rights organizations considered the detention retaliation for his public criticism of the Chinese government.
Ai had challenged official narratives through art, architecture, social media and independent investigations. He documented the names of children who died when poorly constructed schools collapsed during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. He also criticized censorship, corruption and the absence of government transparency. His international reputation made the detention a major diplomatic and cultural controversy.
During his confinement, Ai was kept in a small room under continuous artificial light. Guards remained close to him while he ate, slept, washed and used the toilet. Privacy was eliminated almost completely, while interrogations focused on his activities, relationships and public statements. After his release, he experienced sleeping difficulties, memory problems and the lasting psychological effects of constant surveillance.
The artist has returned to that experience repeatedly in earlier works. S.A.C.R.E.D., created between 2011 and 2013, used six large dioramas to reconstruct scenes of his detention. The installation allowed viewers to look through openings into miniature prison environments, placing them in the position of observers. His 2013 music video Dumbass also transformed incarceration into a confrontational visual narrative.
Sewing a Button differs because Ai himself will occupy the reconstructed space. The performance removes the protective distance created by sculpture, film or representation. His body becomes both the subject and material of the work. Every routine action will unfold under observation, echoing the conditions imposed on him while exposing them to public scrutiny.
The electronic duo Space Afrika will create the performance’s sound environment and provide a live mixing session during the event. Sound is expected to reinforce the tension between repetition and uncertainty inside the cell. Silence, questioning, bodily movement and mechanical surveillance will become part of the artistic composition. The project therefore combines performance, architecture, journalism, music and digital transmission.
Ai has explained that his detention no longer belongs only to his personal biography. He considers coercion, unlawful confinement and political violence part of a broader international reality. By reenacting his experience 15 years later, he seeks to connect individual memory with contemporary systems of power. The work asks whether surveillance and arbitrary authority have become normalized beyond the country where he was imprisoned.
Arthaus’ participation extends that question to Latin American audiences. The Buenos Aires cultural center, founded as a platform for visual art, music, performance and experimentation, will temporarily become a remote observation room. Visitors will not simply watch documentation recorded in the past. They will witness the performance as it happens, sharing the same uninterrupted chronology as the artist.
That simultaneity is central to the project. Digital technology often promises connection and transparency, but it also expands the capacity to monitor individuals continuously. Sewing a Button uses the same visual logic associated with institutional control and redirects it toward public testimony. The camera that once represented state domination becomes an instrument through which the experience is exposed.
The project accompanies Button Up!, Ai Weiwei’s major site-specific exhibition at Factory International. Together, the exhibition and performance explore the relationship between Britain and China, while addressing censorship, identity and political responsibility. The live event adds an element of physical risk and emotional unpredictability that conventional exhibitions cannot reproduce.
Ai Weiwei left China after his passport was returned in 2015 and has since worked internationally. His art continues to combine personal history with questions about migration, imprisonment, freedom of expression and government authority. Sewing a Button may be one of his most direct confrontations with the detention that reshaped his life. By transmitting it across continents, the work converts private trauma into a collective act of witnessing.
La memoria también resiste cuando se hace visible. / Memory also resists when it becomes visible.