Manchester, United Kingdom

The Chinese activist-architect-artist, Ai Weiwei, has opened his monumental exhibition Button Up! at Factory International’s Aviva Studios in Manchester, United Kingdom in which history, power, and empires collide.

Produced by Factory International, the exhibition explores two centuries of British-Chinese relations, colonialism, and industrialization through monumental works—many utilizing his collection of 30 tons of salvaged buttons from the now defunct South London factory.

The idea was to bridge more than 200 years of history, from Britain’s industrial imperialism to China’s place in today’s globalized world.

The artist transformed the ex-warehouse venue with large-scale installations made out of—you guessed it—buttons, as well as more than 3.5 million Lego pieces.

As usual, the artist’s exhibition fuses art with political statements and controversy.

“Ai Weiwei,” states architecture critic Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, “is a global citizen, a passionate social activist, creative visionary, and one of the most provocative architects/artists of our time.”

“Ai Weiwei emerged as a vocal commentator of China’s authoritarian regime and more and continues to create art that transcends the matrix of Eastern and Western ideas.”

“He is a staunch defender of human rights and the freedom of expression; his work taps into the human condition, addressing injustices and truth, advocating for humanity, and providing a critical lens through which to examine humanity’s relationship to nature and the environment and confront systems of economic, political and societal power,” continues Mr. Narkiewicz-Laine.

Monumental in scale and ambition, Ai Weiwei: Button Up! is the artist’s most expansive and ambitious presentation to date.

In Button Up!, the artist turns his lens on two centuries of Chinese and British relations. Taking inspiration from Manchester, a city at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, the architect/artist explores how historic systems of trade, empire, and exploitation resonate in today’s humanitarian and political crises.

Both global and personal, the title Button Up! is a playful poke at the artist’s ongoing battle with censorship.

Conceived as a total environment, work is a monumental installation featuring porcelain, cotton, glass, bronze, and even buttons and toy bricks otherwise destined for landfill.

Each material contains a story of human invention and consumption. Together, they paint a picture of grim globalization.

In the installation, the first thing you encounter is a black glass chandelier made of skeletons—The Human Comedy. Like a head on a stake, this is art as warning. Powerfully symbolic; powerfully poetic.

Further on, bronzes looted by dead empires have been recast and reclaimed and dilapidated ancient ruins have been rebuilt.

From there, The Eight-Nation Alliance Flags—including Britain, US, Japan, France, and the Austrian-Hungarian empire—hang from the ceiling as massive, monumental tapestries adorned with half a million buttons each.

These countries invaded China to squash its 1900 Boxer Rebellion, a violent uprising that had sought to reduce Western influence in China.

The flags look heavy; they feel heavy; weighed down by history and historical impact.

The 30 tons of buttons were mysteriously purchased by the artist in 2019 from a bankrupt English factory, after making a bid on Twitter to claim boxes of unsold stock from the London company A Brown and Co.

The buttons travelled back to China, where craftspeople assembled four million of them into the vast national flags before they returned once more to the UK.  Manufacturing, colonialism, labor and globaliZation become full-cycle and inseparable.

Next, The History of Bombs is a spectacular 2D installation composed of 3.5 million toy bricks stretching 25 meters—a wall covered in images of the most powerful bombs ever invented.

Then, Law of the Journey, a forty-nine-metre inflatable refugee boat packed with anonymous figures dominates the vast space, and it remains one of the most affecting artworks about migration produced this century. In his work, refugees cease to be statistics and instead become physically overwhelming.

“Everywhere you look here,” states Mr. Narkiewicz-Laine, “you will find death, exploitation, greed and suffering from across human history, brought back to life and put morbidly on display.”

“The installation suggests silence, censorship, and obedience—ideas that have shaped much of the creator’s own life.

“The architect/artist has woven together narratives of industrialization, colonialism, and historic violence into a complex image of modern history.”

Coinciding with the exhibition, Ai Weiwei’s performed a 24-hour live piece from July 3 to July 4 in a recreation of his 2011 secret detention cell, marking the 15th anniversary of his 81-day captivity in a Chinese prison.

“Button Up! immerses visitors in Ai Weiwei’s fearless interrogation of the forces past and present that drive today’s injustices—while championing art’s enduring power to challenge and inspire,” Mr. Narkiewicz-Laine asserts.

“Ai Weiwei is renowned for making strong aesthetic statements that resonate with timely phenomena across today’s geopolitical world. From architecture to installations, social media to documentaries, he uses a wide range of mediums as expressions of new ways for his audiences to examine society and its values.”

“I’m not interested in making very big things just for the sake of it,” states Ai Weiwei.

“But in Manchester, that wonderful Warehouse space calls for monumental work. Visiting the city for this exhibition—the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution—and reflecting on Britain’s global territorial expansion made me realize I had to explore that history and understand how it connects to the forces driving today’s wars and global crises.”

“The world today is deeply divided, with tragedy all around. Understanding history goes hand in hand with standing up for truth and justice.”

Ai Weiwei: Button Up! continues through September 6, 2026 at The Warehouse, Aviva Studios, Water Street, Manchester, M3 4JQ.