From new Portuguese home, Ai Weiwei plans tribute to "visionary" Gorbachev

Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei poses before an interview with Reuters in Montemor-O-Novo, Portugal, March 3, 2021. Picture taken March 3, 2021. REUTERS/Pedro Nunes

MONTEMOR-O-NOVO, Portugal (Reuters) - Ai Weiwei, the Chinese dissident whose activist art has made him Beijing's best-known critic, has swapped life in British exile for Portugal, where, in a countryside estate east of Lisbon, he is working on a monument commemorating Mikhail Gorbachev.

Ai's move to Berlin in 2015, partly out of gratitude at German lobbying for his passport to be restored, was hailed as a sign of the city's cultural and political ascendancy, just as many saw his 2019 move to Britain as a vote of confidence in that country's post-Brexit future.