His assistants were working, designs were tacked to the walls, but Ai lived in legal purgatory, free to make art but barred from leaving the capital. Police required him to check in every time he left his house. “I have to pronounce to them where I have to go and whom I have to meet,” he told me. “I basically obey their orders because it doesn’t mean anything. I also want to tell them I’m not afraid. I’m not secretive. They can follow me.” ArtReview magazine had recently published its list of the art world’s most powerful players and had ranked Ai Weiwei number one. When a reporter called to ask his reaction, he said it was absurd; he did not “feel powerful at all.” He felt fragile and, for the first time in a long while, captive to forces beyond his control. Ai Weiwei had stepped out of detention and into a larger battle for influence in China’s cultural life. Not long after the artist was released, President Hu Jintao vowed to shore up what he called China’s “cultural security.”
