Whether as an artist, architect, designer, curator, or cook, Ai Weiwei's preferred role is that of mediator. In his performances, his primary interest is to convey experiences that show his audience the world from different perspectives. In his opinion they function like an open network in which everything is related to everything, and in which new structures continuously arise. Accordingly he regards objects made by human hands as fixed points in this stream, as mirrors of an identity not given by nature, but constructed. So when Ai Weiwei changes such objects, arranges them in new constellations, robs them of their utility, or transfers them to other locations, he is always also intervening in an overall structure of human existence.

This view is exemplified in the work Scales (2008), which the artist says "is a study of how simple, elementary components can develop into forms and furniture." The two cube-like copper and stainless steel sculptures are based on cubic forms that, unfolded, suggest new, primarily practical uses. In other works, he proceeds in the opposite direction, detaching objects from their functional context and turning them into metaphors for the viewer's reflection, for example in the architectural installation Template (2007), a wooden architecture constructed from doors and windows of demolished houses and religious buildings in China. The piece gained some notoriety when it collapsed at last year's documenta. Ai Weiwei thereby dissolves familiar contexts and recombines their elements in new ways to create conceptually free spaces and to generate new meanings.

It was probably the last documenta that introduced the work of Ai Weiwei, born in 1957 in Beijing, to a wider European audience. Following the persecution of his family by the Mao government, the 1981 graduate of the Beijing Film Academy decided to move to New York. Twelve years later he returned to his home country and became a star artist.