Manchester will host the Ai Weiwei exhibition ‘Button Up!’ this summer

This summer, Manchester will welcome one of the most ambitious Ai Weiwei exhibitions in the UK to date. Entitled Ai Weiwei: Button Up!, the project opens at Aviva Studios, the home of Factory International. It will transform the city’s vast warehouse space into a monumental reflection on history, power and global exchange, firmly positioning itself among the most significant art events in Manchester in 2026.

Running from July 2nd to September 6th, 2026, the exhibition marks Ai Weiwei’s largest presentation in the north of England and draws directly on Manchester’s legacy as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.

Chinese and British relations through material and monument

At the heart of Button Up! is an uncompromising exploration of Chinese and British relations over the last 200 years. Ai Weiwei uses Manchester’s industrial past as a lens through which to examine systems of trade, empire, colonial expansion, and exploitation—and how these historic forces continue to shape today’s political and humanitarian crises.

The exhibition is conceived as a total environment, bringing together new and existing large-scale installations shown in the UK for the first time. Materials including porcelain, cotton, glass, bronze, Lego bricks, and millions of reclaimed buttons are deployed not for spectacle alone, but as carriers of social memory, labor, and power. Each object traces a story of invention, production, and consumption within global capitalism.

Manchester art events: monumental works at Aviva Studios

Taking full advantage of the scale of the Warehouse at Aviva Studios, Ai Weiwei: Button Up! features several major new works created specifically for Manchester. Highlights include Eight-Nation Alliance Flag, a series of monumental textile works made from hundreds of thousands of buttons, referencing the coalition of imperial powers that invaded China during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. The flags confront the violence embedded in early globalisation and its lasting consequences.

Also debuting is a new version of History of Bombs, a vast installation constructed entirely from toy bricks, extending Ai Weiwei’s ongoing interrogation of warfare, ideology, and mass production. Together, these works transform humble, everyday materials into powerful symbols of empire, resistance, and collective memory.

The title Button Up! carries a double meaning—both a playful nod to censorship and restraint, and a metaphor for how global systems are fastened together through invisible networks of labor and control.

Commissioned and produced by Factory International, Ai Weiwei: Button Up! immerses visitors in a fearless examination of industrial history, globalisation, and contemporary injustice—confirming Manchester’s place on the international cultural map and reinforcing the exhibition as a defining moment in the calendar of Manchester art events.

While we are awaiting this exhibition, join our conversation with Ai Weiwei about art and power, how the ordinary can be transformed, and why freedom requires imagination and courage.