straight

06Jun13

I love this Ai Weiwei installation from the 2013 Venice Art Biennale. He gathered 150 tons of steel rebar from the wreckage of the Sichuan quake for the material. (This disaster occurred in 2008 and claimed the lives of 5,000 school children. Ai Weiwei was active in uncovering the names of all the victims, facts that the Chinese government wanted to keep quiet. He was arrested and jailed for his involvement. Many of his subsequent works have referenced the tragedy. Long story, but there’s a brief background for anyone getting acquainted with this artist. via.) Sizes of the steel varied in length and diameter. For the work, he had all the pieces of  steel straightened, as if new. All of the steel rods are then arranged into neat stacks and piles, suggesting there is some order in their being there. This article says that this aspect is “metaphorically speaking of the artist trying to make things right” – which I can see. Further, the room holding all the steel seems like it would be heavy  on an emotional level, the stacks and stacks of rods reminding the viewer of the individual victims of the disaster.  via designboom. <<–there’s also a great video on this link that discusses his works from the Biennale.

Filed under: installation   |  1 Comment
Tags: ai weiwei, children, china, installation, order, quake, rods, school, stacks, steel, straight, symbolic, Venice Biennale