You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest today is China's most internationally famous artist, Iwei Wei Wei.

Now in his early 60s he has a body of work which incorporates sculpture, film, documentary, installation, architecture, photography,

a prolific and eclectic output united by a determination to question authority, provoke difficult questions and give voice

to the voiceless, particularly in his native China. Hardly surprised then that he consistently

ran into trouble with the Chinese Communist Party as his fame spread. In 2011, he was charged with financial crimes and was imprisoned

for almost three months. He has since left China, and after a brief residence in Berlin, he and his

family are now based in the UK. In recent years, his creative output has been profoundly affected

by his experiences, in his words, a high-end political refugee.

So how does this Chinese artist express his feelings about his homeland now?

Well, Iwewewe joins me. Welcome to Hard Talk.

Thank you. Has living in exile changed you, do you think,

as an artist? I think essentially I'm the same. I was born as an exile. My father was

exiled the year I was born. So he was sent to Xinjiang a remote diary, and now they have

a weaker people being put in this education camps. But where are the earliest one?

1958. But I guess this is different because you're now so very far from your homeland and so much of your

artistic output in China was sort of pushing at the edges of a repressive system asking questions

of it challenging it and now you're no longer in it do you think the outside world particularly

the Western world in which you now live, have come to

terms with what China represents, perhaps even the threat it represents?

I think the West economically benefited by such a huge market and kind of dreamful environment, even its dictatorship,

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