As a chilling breeze sweeps in from San Francisco Bay through opened barred windows, a forty-five foot eastern dragon suspended from the rafters by thin cables shakes back and forth, as if it is shivering. The matte grey cinderblock walls of Alcatraz prison have never been renowned for their ascetic affinity, but today they are the eerie and oddly beautiful backdrop to Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s latest artistic experiment.

Sculptor, photography, filmmaker, activist, and self-proclaimed top tier black jack player, Weiwei has become a bit of an enigma for the Chinese government. He was born and raised in Beijing. At age 24 he left China to live in New York where he slowly gained recognition through several successful photography exhibits. Weiwei returned to China in 1993 when his father became ill. Soon after, he established an experimental art center in Beijing. Along with the other artists at the center, he began to explore other media, particularly avant-guard sculpture, which he is most known for now.

Ever since his return to China, Weiwei’s work has been critical of the dominate Communist Party. He has been vocal on such issues as the one child policy, human rights abuses in Tibet, suppression of free speech, and the self-interested nature of the unicameral and unitary National People’s Congress.

His work has met the eyes of as many government officials as art critics and the former is typically un-amused. The Chinese Government has been making strides to suppress Weiwei’s work in its borders. For this reason, Weiwei has outsourced most of his larger, more controversial projects to other countries. In 2008, a devastating earthquake caused the collapse of a several schools, killing nearly 2500 students, in the Chinese providence Sichuan due to gross structural neglect. In response, Weiwei traveled to Germany and constructed a powerful critique on the façade of an art museum. With brightly colored neon backpacks he spelled out in Chinese characters “For Seven Years She Lived Happily on This Earth”, a quote for a mother of one of the victims.

In 2011, Weiwei was placed under arrest while attempting to fly to Hong Kong for an exhibit opening. Since then, Weiwei has not been allowed to leave the country.

Undeterred, Weiwei began work on his latest project in 2012. In his search for the ideal venue for his new vision of a commentary on the imprisonment of political dissenters, he came across the decommissioned prison on Alcatraz.

Weiwei’s new exhibit “@large” has taken over the old prison. Weiwei designed, directed, and oversaw the two year installation process from China, going off of cell phone pictures and 3D computer models to ensure his vision was being properly constructed. The exhibit features several sculptures, including the hanging, multicolored dragon “With Wind”, and “Refraction”, a massive metal bird’s wing built from solar panels on a heavy metal frame.

The artist is also experimenting with several multimedia pieces like “Stay Tuned”. In the piece, the observer enters on of 12 prison cells and listens to the recordings of the works of authors, poets, and musicians who have been imprisoned for creative expression in various countries.

Weiwei’s work will stay safe from censorship on “The Rock”, but he and many artists in China will never get the opportunity to express their work in their own country due to the People’s Republic’s strict censorship laws. The Chinese government understands the power of art. A well reported piece of journalism may present a pragmatic and logical argument for a cause, but a piece of art can deeply affect someone’s psyche. A focused, emotional response will get people talking or have then flying out into the streets.

During the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 60s and 70s, the state brought in young, modernist artists to participate in a propaganda campaign to remove traditionalist elements from the culture and create a new identity for China. The use of arts to affect public opinion dominated nearly a decade of Chinese history in the 20^th century. Because they know and have utilized the influence art has over a population, they are ever wearier of it. This brings us to the modern artistic landscape of China populated by the Communist Party’s ruthless regulation of film, photography, literature, and art.

Censorship plays a unique role in the history of many countries. For governments, free speech in the arts is scarier than the horror movies their parents told them they couldn’t watch when they were younger. Governments can deal with armed revolution because all they will have to do is fight something. But if they are criticized by the public, they may have to change something. Spooky stuff.

Many, even in the US, see censorship as necessary in small amounts to ensure a level of public decency. The FCC, for example, is a government institution that is allowed tell television networks series and the artists (I use this term under its most liberal definition, given the quality of certain network programs) who create them what they cannot say or do. The FCC does this in pursuit of the seemingly noble goal of making sure viewers will not be offended. However, being offended is an important part of public discourse. If someone is offended by a statement or claim made by a piece of art, then it has forced that person to think about that issue. Ultimately, any censorship of free speech takes away an opportunity for thought and discussion. And China is the extreme example of what can happen if a government attempts to censor everything it deems “offensive”.

Unfortunately for authoritarian states, censorship makes too many false assumptions about human nature to ever be truly effective at curbing change, which are brilliantly summarized by Weiwei: “The misconception of totalitarianism is that freedom can be imprisoned. This is not the case. When you constrain freedom, freedom will take flight and land on a windowsill.”

Weiwei has lived the past 20 years of his life hopping windowsill to windowsill. He continues to thwart any and all attempts to silence or manipulate his work and his message of change is all the more powerful because of it.