Belonging is important to the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, but finding a place of belonging is not easy. In his home country, Ai’s open criticism of the Communist government won him notoriety in the media, an arrest in 2011, and eventually lifelong exile. “I don’t see myself as a dissident artist,” he has said. “I see them as a dissident government!” Ai is a champion of free expression, using photography, sculpture, video, and installation to re-examine history and the world’s power structures—“Everything is art. Everything is politics.” This major exhibition, his first U.S. retrospective in over a decade, presents over 130 works spanning four decades. —Elena Clavarino