Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist whose works normally involve some sort of protest, especially against authority and governments.
The piece of work that I am going to talk about is his installation and video titled “Remembrance”
The main aim for this project was to have the names of the students who died whilst in school during the Sichuan earthquake. More than 5000 children died due to schools collapsing and corrupt governments and shoddy construction companies were blamed.
The metal from this exhibition came from some of the collapsed schools and Ai Weiwei straightened and arranged them to form waves.
Just after the aftermath he also went to the areas where the schools collapsed and photographed the debris left behind.
However what I think is the most poignant part of the piece as a whole is the audio recording of the names of the students, to listen to the whole thing would take 7 hours and 22 minutes and it makes you think of the lives lost and the families attached to all of these names.
Ever since I saw the video (link below) talking about this piece of work I immediately loved it as it has layers of sadness, anger, grief and protest all mixed into one.
NB – all photographs here have been taken from these sites:
http://www.aiweiwei.com/index.html
http://www.aiweiwei.com/projects/5-12-citizens-investigation/remembrance/index.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDwTjPsG4b0
I do not own any of the pictures on this post.
Until next time
byyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Róisín -x
Róisín Gallagher 