This is Shepard Fairey's Ai Weiwei — Cost of Expression, an original 2014 screen print hand-signed and numbered by Fairey from an edition of 375. It is one of the most politically charged prints of Fairey's career — a direct act of solidarity with Chinese dissident artist and activist Ai Weiwei, released in conjunction with the Brooklyn Museum retrospective Ai Weiwei: According to What? and produced in partnership with Friends of Ai Weiwei, the international pressure group campaigning for free expression. At an edition of 375 — with 100 prints donated directly to the Brooklyn Museum — the number available to private collectors was strictly limited from the moment of release.

The composition is a large-scale close portrait of Ai Weiwei rendered in Fairey's signature high-contrast stencil style in four tones: cream (the paper ground), red, black, and brilliant metallic gold. The subject faces left, gaze elevated — a posture common to heroic portraiture from Soviet propaganda through mid-century revolutionary posters. The background is a dramatic diagonal field that transitions from deep red to metallic gold, with dense radiating halftone lines that fade and dissolve like broadcast interference or the spread of signal. A small OBEY eagle/lion medallion — Fairey's secondary emblem — appears as a stamp in the upper-right field. The figure wears a dark coat. Flame-like brushwork fills the beard and hair with extraordinary detail: fine white lines, red flare strokes, and gold filaments, a technique Fairey used in his most ambitious political portraits of this era.

The portrait is based on a 2010 photograph by Chinese photographer Gao Yuan. Critically, the photograph — and therefore this print — documents the physical aftermath of a specific act of state violence: the scars visible on Ai Weiwei's head are the result of a 2009 assault by undercover police officers in Chengdu, where Ai had traveled to testify on behalf of victims of the Sichuan earthquake. Fairey made this context explicit in his artist statement. The subject's injuries are literally in the work. This is not decorative portraiture.

Ai Weiwei (born 1957, Beijing) is one of the most significant and politically consequential artists of the 21st century. The son of the exiled poet Ai Qing, he lived in New York from 1981 to 1993, moving in circles that included Allen Ginsberg and absorbing the legacy of Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol before returning to China to launch an artistic career that placed him in direct confrontation with the Chinese state. His works have entered the collections of the Tate Modern, MoMA, the Guggenheim, and major institutions worldwide.

In 2009, Ai Weiwei traveled to Chengdu to testify in support of parents whose children had died in the Sichuan earthquake — deaths linked to shoddily constructed "tofu construction" government school buildings. He was assaulted by plainclothes police officers. The injuries to his head required emergency surgery months later in Munich when a brain hemorrhage was discovered. In 2011, Chinese authorities detained him for 81 days without charge. His passport was seized and not returned until 2015. This is the backdrop against which Fairey made this print. The portrait's scars are not abstract: they are documented injuries from a documented act of state violence.

By 2014, Fairey was one of the most collected street artists in the world. His 2008 Obama HOPE poster had entered the Smithsonian Institution and the National Portrait Gallery. His work was held by MoMA, LACMA, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum. The Cost of Expression print belongs to his mature political period — after his global recognition was fully established — in which he used that platform to amplify voices at risk. Other subjects from this era include Leonard Peltier and various environmental activists.

The Ai Weiwei print represents Fairey at his most technically refined. The four-color Speckletone screen print, with its gradient halftone field and fine-line facial detail, demonstrates the full capability of his studio's production process. It is among the most technically complex prints from this period of his output.

• Original Shepard Fairey Ai Weiwei — Cost of Expression screen print, 2014
• Hand-signed and numbered in pencil by Shepard Fairey (confirm placement and edition number before listing)
• Edition of 375 — one of only ~275 available to private collectors (100 donated to Brooklyn Museum at release)
• 4-color screen print on cream Speckletone — unframed, stored flat
• Gauntlet Gallery digital provenance documentation