Artist Ai Weiwei will unveil a new exhibition titled “Button Up!” at Factory International in Manchester, England, opening July 2. The show features monumental installations made from 30 tons of buttons he rescued from a shuttered British factory in 2019, along with over 3.5 million Lego pieces. Highlights include eight flags sewn with 9,000 buttons each, referencing the Eight-Nation Alliance that invaded China during the Boxer Rebellion, and a new version of his Lego work *History of Bombs*. The buttons were secretly shipped to China, where artisans assembled the works over 281 days.
The exhibition matters because it uses Manchester—the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and a hub of textile production—as a site to critique imperialism, colonial expansion, and profit-driven capitalism. Ai connects Britain’s industrial past to China’s current role in globalized manufacturing, framing globalization as a form of neo-colonialism. The show continues Ai’s practice of transforming everyday objects into potent political symbols, addressing historical and contemporary power imbalances between nations.