MEXICO CITY: Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's interest in studying human rights around the world led to his meeting with relatives of the 43 college students who disappeared in southern Mexico in 2014. That encounter led, in turn, to his new exhibit in Mexico's capital.
Ai has lived under house arrest in China and faced censorship because of his activism, even as his fame led to major exhibits in leading international museums, including the Tate Gallery in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In Mexico, Ai chose a university museum to mount his exhibit dedicated to the case of the students from the teachers' college at Ayotzinapa in Guerrero state. He used students to assemble Legos into big, colourful portraits of the 43 missing young people.
"He wanted it to be a university structure," said Cuauhtémoc Medina, one of the curators of "Ai Weiwei: Re-establish memories," the show at the contemporary art museum of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
The idea began in 2016 when Medina took Ai to the Miguel Agustin Pro Human Rights Center, where the artist talked with some of the students' relatives.
"At some point he told them that he had also been a political prisoner, that when one is disappeared in a completely isolated situation, the only thing that keeps you alive is being totally convinced that your loved ones must be fighting by any means possible to get you back," Medina said.
Ai was confined to his home in China as a result of his outspoken criticisms following the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province that killed some 90,000 people, including thousands of children in poorly constructed schools.
The 43 Mexican students disappeared Sept 14, 2014, in the Guerrero city of Iguala after local police allegedly turned them over to a local drug gang.