Writers Bloc Presents® and the Skirball invite you to a pre-recorded conversation with internationally acclaimed artist and Trace creator, Ai Weiwei, as he discusses his highly anticipated memoir, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows. During this exclusive program, the only virtual event planned in promotion of the book, Ai will speak with renowned social practice artist and University of Chicago professor Theaster Gates.

Targeted by Chinese authorities for his political activism, Ai faced months of secret detention without charge in 2011. “During those long weeks, I thought often of my father, a poet who had been exiled during Mao Zedong’s Anti-Rightist Campaign,” Ai says. “I realized how incomplete my understanding of him was and how much I regretted the unbridgeable gap between us.”

Not wanting his son to suffer the same regret, Ai set out to write what he knew of his father and to share openly about his own life from artistic unknown to art world superstar. At once intimate and ambitious, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows explores Ai’s own family history and offers a deep understanding of the myriad forces that have shaped modern China. The result is an expansive new work that serves as a timely reminder of the urgent need to protect freedom of expression.

“An instant classic in the literature of China’s rise, a protest against the destruction of memory, and a glorious testament to the power of free expression.”—Evan Osnos, author