Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei talks to us about his autobiography at his home in Portugal

He knew hunger, misery in the labor camps of China in the 1960s. The glory of contemporary art exhibitions. Then disgrace, reprisals from the Chinese regime and finally exile. Today, Ai Weiwei enjoys the comfort of his Portuguese villa, an hour’s drive from Lisbon, very close to the city of Evora. He settled there two years ago to create in peace and in the sun.

After fleeing China in 2015, the artist had settled down in Berlin. The German metropolis ended up “depress” in his words. But will he stay in Portugal? Nothing is less certain. “I quickly change my mind” he confides to us during a visit to his property. Ai Weiwei has set up a small workshop to work with wood. In recent weeks, he has accumulated roots of olive trees. Their tortured forms will perhaps inspire him for a future installation… “Or maybe not” adds the visual artist without laughing, a bit provocative.

After offering us tea, Ai Weiwei settles down in the courtyard of his large house. He returned to our camera on his tumultuous life, marked by the influence of a poet father: Ai Qing.

After studying in France in the 1920s, this writer father joined the Chinese Communist Party very early on. But the Cultural Revolution did not spare him. His poems have been considered “too far to the right”. Fifty years later, Ai Weiwei has also drawn the wrath of Beijing. In 2011, he was detained for almost three months in a secret prison. A trauma that pushed him to tell his memoirs.

“1000 years of joys and sorrows” by Ai Weiwei, Buchet-Chastel, 432 pages, 24 euros.