bricworks3 the watercube post-olympics ai weiwei - ARCHILEPSY ...

Two Joined Square Tables
rad artist spotlight
Ai eventually opened up a studio after his father’s death. It was here
that he would begin a series of works in which he would deconstruct
Chinese antiques and reconstruct them in new ways. After years of
studying craft, he would take a series of tables and begin to take them
apart. Through careful attention to craft, he would then reassemble
them in new ways, using methods consistent with the traditional ways
that were used to build the original piece. The newly assembled tables
would appear warped and deconstructed, taking full advantage of both
floor and wall and the legs of the tables would be turned in a multitude
of directions.
Juxtaposed with his work of objects and craft, are a series of pieces
tied more closely to social and political critique. One of these works,
for example, was ‘Remembering’, an exhibit for the Haus Der Kunst in
Munich. The piece consisted of 9000 children’s backpacks blanketing
the facade of the museum. Through the use of different colors, the
arrangement of backpacks on the wall would display a series of Chinese
characters that read ““she lived happily in this world for seven years.”
It was a quote from the mother of one of victims of the 2008 Sichuan
earthquake. Ai Weiwei used this installation as an opportunity to
criticise the government which had build schools that were poorly
engineered, resulting in the deaths of thousand of children when the
faulty structures collapsed during the earthquake.
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