Famed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei said today that he has been given back his passport, four years after he was detained by the government for 81 days.
The 58-year-old dissident artist told Reuters today that the Exit And Entry Bureau, which issues passports, called him up earlier today to pick up his passport. He then shared a photo of himself holding his passport on Instagram.
The move will allow Ai to leave China for the first time since 2011. He was detained without being charged, which caught the attention of the international art community and governments worldwide. It wasn’t until after he was arrested that the government requested that he pay a $2.4 million fine for tax evasion.
Now that he will be able to leave China, he can attend the Royal Academy of Art retrospective of his work in London in September. Considering that China’s President Xi Jinping is also set to visit the U.K. next month, it could have drawn negative attention if Ai couldn’t travel there as well.
Ai’s work has been shown around the world and is often critical of the Chinese government. The artist told Reuters that security has decreased around his home, but authorities didn’t say why they let him have his passport.
“Now that they've let me go abroad, I believe they will let me return home,” he told Reuters.
image via Instagram from Ai Weiwei