Ai Weiwei will be the first artist to have the full run of the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence when his first retrospective in Italy, Ai Weiwei: Libero, opens there on 23 September (until 22 January 2017). Sculptures, installations, photos and videos will fill the exhibition spaces inside and out, including the piano nobile, the Strozzina contemporary art gallery and the courtyard, says Arturo Galansino, the director general of the Strozzi. The show will include Reframe, a new installation made in response to the ongoing refugee crisis. Ai plans to hang 22 inflatable orange boats evoking Italian search-and-rescue missions in the Mediterranean across the venue's façade. The work, supported by the charitable foundation Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, will symbolise "cultural rescue in this time of international and European crisis", Galansino says. Meanwhile, the courtyard will host Refraction, a five-tonne metal sculpture of a bird's wing previously shown in the former prison of Alcatraz. Its feathers are made from solar panels used in Tibetan cookers – a reference to the region's long struggle for freedom from China.