Artist and activist Ai Weiwei will unveil a striking new public installation titled Camouflage at New York’s Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park in September 2025. As the inaugural commission of the Art X Freedom initiative—a program launched by the Four Freedoms Park Conservancy to spotlight art that engages with themes of justice and liberty—Weiwei’s installation is a bold meditation on visibility, vulnerability, and the cost of conflict.
Suspended above the park’s central axis, the open-air structure will be cloaked in camouflage netting. But in true Ai Weiwei fashion, there’s a twist: rather than adopting the standard military aesthetic, the netting features a whimsical pattern of cats. Rejecting the violence-laden symbolism of traditional camouflage, which he called “personally repulsive,” Weiwei drew inspiration instead from a nearby cat rescue shelter on Roosevelt Island. “I believe a society’s humanity can be measured by how it treats animals,” he told The New York Times.
Camouflage invites viewers to consider the duality of concealment and protection, echoing the broader human experience amid global crises.
