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Ai Weiwei, Forever Bicycles (2012). All photos via Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

Ai Weiwei’s current exhibition and semi-retrospective at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Ai Weiwei, Absent, includes pieces dating back to 1983, including large-scale sculpture and a collection of 100 photographs divided into his two artistic phases—in the East Village, New York and in Beijing, China. “Whenever Ai had a spare moment he would fill it with pictures of the places he visited, people he met, the area he lived,” states the exhibition’s press release. This lends a feeling of immediacy and voyeurism to Ai’s photos, as the viewer is shown a glimpse of the artist’s life as he documents the lives of others.

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Ai Weiwei, Zhang Huan (1994)

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