Ai Weiwei on colonialism and statues, Churchill, China and Covid

As his controversial Gilded Cage installation goes on display at Blenheim Palace, the artist and human rights campaigner reflects on the complicated world'

From this week a seven-metre-high installation entitled Gilded Cage, by the exiled Chinese artist and human rights campaigner Ai Weiwei, will be on display at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. The piece, originally constructed for Central Park in New York in 2017, was made as a reflection on the worldwide refugee crisis. Ai Weiwei, 64, is currently based in Lisbon. This conversation took place last week by phone.

Tell me a little bit about Gilded Cage. How did it come about?
I made it not long after I came out of China after four or five years of detention. I was researching migrants in Europe to make a film [Human Flow, 2018] and the Public Art Fund in New York City asked me to do a project. The golden cage was not far from Trump Tower, maybe three blocks away. It looks like a bird cage and it is double layered so that the audience can go into it and see how the world looks from there.