By Emily Gogolak 8/02/12 10:00am

Q&A

Filmmaker Alison Klayman with Ai Weiei (Ted Alcorn).

Ai Weiwei’s Documentarian on Luck, Dissidence and Steven Colbert: An Interview with Alison Klayman

Since the launch of his incendiary blog in 2005, Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist-cum-social-media-genius, has been raising eyebrows and turning heads worldwide for his subversive stabs against Beijing’s iron fist. He has launched a sort of neo-cultural revolution in China, breathing new power into the voice of the individual and bringing himself under the wrath of the Chinese government. And thanks to Alison Klayman, the 27 year-old filmmaker whose first documentary, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, hit movie screens nationwide this week, Weiwei might soon be as much of a household name in America as Warhol.

The Observer caught up with Ms. Klayman this week near her apartment in Morningside Heights. She looks young, and more like a fresh-faced Columbia student on her way to class than a filmmaker who might be on her way to winning an Oscar. But, when she starts talking, it all makes sense: you can tell this girl is serious business, an up-and-coming artist in her own right, and one to keep our eyes on. Read More

By Elise Knutsen 7/27/11 11:42am

Party Circuit

6 Photos

Dr. Purnendu Chatterjee, Hal Newman

Asia Society’s Private Viewing of Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993

Last night, the Asia Society held a private reception for their new exhibition of Ai Weiwei photographs.  Stephanie and John Foster, Belle McIntyre, Alexander Gilkes, and Tatijana Shoan attended the event. The exhibition features photographs of New York that City which the embattled Chinese artist took between the early eighties and early nineties.

The artist, Read More

By Ruirui Kuang and Rebecca Panovka 6/30/11 2:05pm

Art Openings

Ai's self-portrait outside Tomkins Square Park, 1986. c/o Asia Society Museum.

Ai Weiwei Captures a Bygone New York

Three decades before his arrest and subsequent release last week by the Chinese government incited a media firestorm, Ai Weiwei worked as a Times Square street portraitist.

Enrolled at Parsons and living on the Lower East Side, he encountered drug dealers in abandoned buildings, a gritty underground arts scene, and police brutality at Tomkins Square Read More