Ai Weiwei 'Three Perfectly Proportioned Spheres and Camouflage Uniforms Painted White' at Pavilion 13, Ukraine

15 September 2025

From 14 September – 30 November 2025, RIBBON International presents a major new installation by Ai Weiwei titled Three Perfectly Proportioned Spheres and Camouflage Uniforms Painted White.

"In this era, being invited to hold an exhibition in Kyiv, the capital of a country at war, I hope to express certain ideas and reflections through my work. My artworks are not merely an aesthetic expression but also a reflection of my position as an individual navigating immense political shifts, international hegemonies, and conflicts. This exhibition provides a platform to articulate these concerns. At its core, this exhibition is a dialogue about war and peace, rationality and irrationality." –Ai Weiwei

Commissioned by RIBBON International, Three Perfectly Proportioned Spheres and Camouflage Uniforms Painted White represents a continuation and evolution of Ai’s engagement with war. A site-specific response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine amid escalating armed conflicts threatening the world of today, Three Perfectly Proportioned Spheres and Camouflage Uniforms Painted White is testament to the possibilities of art in an age of war. In mining the ideologically-charged objects of the past as the raw materials of his art, Three Perfectly Proportioned Spheres and Camouflage Uniforms Painted White recalls internationally-renowned artworks such as Ai’s Straight (2008-2012), Human Flow (2017) and various life vest installations.

Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s De Divina Proportione, the work comprises three mathematically-precise spheres. These forms celebrate Renaissance ideals of rationality and order, paying homage to Da Vinci’s mathematical world while signaling the chaos of its states of exception.

An extension of Ai’s seminal Five Raincoats Holding a Star, first shown in the late 1980s, each sphere is enveloped in a custom-designed camouflage fabric, which also forms a connective structure across the entire installation. By foregoing conventional military textiles and instead using an atypical camouflage made up of the small and intimate forms of animals, the sculpture instead becomes a testament to both human and non-human victims of war. This has been informed by Ai’s own work in animal rescue, with domestic animals and wildlife amongst the many overlooked casualties of wartime.

Image: Ai Weiwei, Three Perfectly Proportioned Spheres and Camouflage Uniforms Painted White, commissioned by RIBBON International, 2025. Credit: Dmytro Prutkin and RIBBON International