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CIRCA is an evolving portrait of the present moment, created by artists. Together, these works trace the ideas, tensions and possibilities shaping life in the 21st century. Presented across public space, publishing, moving image and live experiences, they form part of the #CIRCAECONOMY, a circular model where one commission creates the conditions for the next. Throughout his career, Ai Weiwei has returned repeatedly to objects that outlive the worlds that produced them. Ancient architecture, archaeological artefacts, twisted steel recovered from the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, industrial buttons, refugee vessels and fragments of cultural history all occupy a central place within his practice. Rather than functioning as symbols, they become witnesses, carrying within them the traces of political upheaval, displacement, memory and survival. His work asks how history is preserved, not only through archives and institutions, but through the material things that endure. These ideas converge in Button Up!, Ai Weiwei’s major exhibition commissioned by Factory International in Manchester. Spanning centuries of history, the exhibition brings together works that reflect on continuity in the face of profound social and political change. At its centre stands the reconstruction of the 500-year-old Wang Family Ancestral Hall, painstakingly rebuilt by Chinese craftspeople using traditional techniques. Elsewhere, monumental sculptures examine migration, conflict and mortality, while thousands of salvaged buttons, once ordinary objects of industry, become carriers of personal and collective memory. Throughout the exhibition, Weiwei reveals how objects continue to bear witness long after the circumstances that created them have disappeared.
