MARIA DUARTE, LEO BOIX and ANGUS REID review Brides, Dead of Winter, A Night Like This, and The Librarians
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War-games: no way way
SIMON DUFF explores the latest offering of the Chinese artist in exile AI WEI WEI
Ai Wei Wei, Wheatfield With Crows, 2024
[©Ai Weiwei Studio/Courtesy of Lisson Gallery London] ![REBELS: Ebada Hassan and Safiyya Ingar in Nadia Fall’s powerful debut feature Brides [Pic: IMDb]](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2025-09/round%20up%20web_0.jpg.webp?itok=41xI6jhN)
MARY CONWAY recommends an early Shakespearean tragedy that feels so contemporary that it mirrors our daily news
A ghost story by Mexican Ave Barrera, a Surrealist poetry collection by Peruvian Cesar Moro, and a manifesto-poem on women’s labour and capitalist havoc by Peruvian Valeria Roman Marroquin
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends a dazzling production of Bernstein’s opera set in a world where chaos and violence are greeted by equanimity
MARY CONWAY is frustrated by a new play that loses its drama amid the moral dilemma of re-settling children in the aftermath of WWII
Acclaimed as a masterpiece when it premiered, this study of story-telling in an Irish pub more than lives up to expectations, says MARY CONWAY
SYLVIA HIKINS relishes a comedy that dives deep into Liverpool’s divided loyalties
Ai Weiwei, A New Chapter
Lisson Gallery, London
DESPITE the obvious reservations about his anti-Chinese propaganda, exiled artist Ai Weiwei’s new work raises awkward questions around his own methods of production.
His Tate Modern 2010 installation Sunflower Seeds consisted of millions of small works, each apparently identical, but all unique. The life-sized sunflower seed husks were intricately hand-crafted in porcelain, each seed individually sculpted and painted by specialists working in small-scale workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Some 100 million seeds formed a seemingly infinite landscape.
As much as a celebration of the work itself, the means of production was the central notion to the work, and the extent of the likely exploitative nature of that was questionable.
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