Ai Weiwei is an artist/ architect and a Beijing native. He is the son of a Chinese poet Ai Qing. From very early in his life he resented the government of China, and became an activist. His way of thinking may have stemmed from his father, who was an anti-Communist painter turned writer after being put into jail. Ai attended the Beijing Film Academy, only after the death of Mao Zedong. He then traveled to and lived in New York for a time between 1981 and 1993. During this time, he studied at Parson’s School of Design. It was in New York were he began to draw inspiration from artists, such as, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and the likes. While in New York, he began making conceptual art with random objects. Ai eventually found his way back to China,
