Think of China; Think of Bicycles. Tangles of bicycles are everywhere in China's congested urban areas. When I visited Shanghai in 2013, on the way in to the upscale restaurant called Mr. and Mrs. Bund, I passed by a clever sculpture and snapped a photo. This sculpture hangs from ceiling to floor in the stairwell atrium inside an office building in Shanghai, just off the Bund, the city's equivalent to the Champs Elysees.
The sculpture was a lacy web of intertwined bicycles dangling on their sides, suspended from the ceiling many floors above, with no end in sight. I snapped this photo and tucked it into my hard drive without giving it another thought.
Fast forward to April 2016, when I visited the Boston Museum of Fine Arts' exhibit on MegaCities Asia. The interior courtyard to the exhibit's entrance is filled with a circle of bicycles latched together.
Not a coincidence. The similarity between the two sculptures caught me. They were so alike, but not the same. The Shanghai bicycles were densely packed and hanging, while the Boston bikes are daisy-chained in a circle and each one is missing components, making every Boston bike unrideable. Both sculptures have the same tell-tale identification....the word "Forever". Here is a close-up of the Boston version.
The artist, Ai Weiwei is best known for his lifetime of work as a human rights activist in China. He has a long resume of documentary film work. He is also an accomplished visual artist, having studied briefly at Parsons School of Design in New York. His work has been critical of the Chinese government. He was jailed for purported tax evasion of the equivalent of $1.8 million US dollars and his Shanghai studio was destroyed by the government. His work is exhibited all over the world and he has been granted many honors.
According to Wikipedia, on May 21, 2015, Ai, along with the folk singer Joan Baez, received Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award, in Berlin, for showing exceptional leadership in the fight for human rights, through his life and work. The artist, who was at the time under surveillance and forbidden from leaving China, could not take part in the ceremony.
But you can see his work in Boston, at the Museum of Fine Arts through July 17, 2016.
http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/megacities-asia
The sculpture was a lacy web of intertwined bicycles dangling on their sides, suspended from the ceiling many floors above, with no end in sight. I snapped this photo and tucked it into my hard drive without giving it another thought.
Fast forward to April 2016, when I visited the Boston Museum of Fine Arts' exhibit on MegaCities Asia. The interior courtyard to the exhibit's entrance is filled with a circle of bicycles latched together.
Not a coincidence. The similarity between the two sculptures caught me. They were so alike, but not the same. The Shanghai bicycles were densely packed and hanging, while the Boston bikes are daisy-chained in a circle and each one is missing components, making every Boston bike unrideable. Both sculptures have the same tell-tale identification....the word "Forever". Here is a close-up of the Boston version.
The artist, Ai Weiwei is best known for his lifetime of work as a human rights activist in China. He has a long resume of documentary film work. He is also an accomplished visual artist, having studied briefly at Parsons School of Design in New York. His work has been critical of the Chinese government. He was jailed for purported tax evasion of the equivalent of $1.8 million US dollars and his Shanghai studio was destroyed by the government. His work is exhibited all over the world and he has been granted many honors.
According to Wikipedia, on May 21, 2015, Ai, along with the folk singer Joan Baez, received Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award, in Berlin, for showing exceptional leadership in the fight for human rights, through his life and work. The artist, who was at the time under surveillance and forbidden from leaving China, could not take part in the ceremony.
But you can see his work in Boston, at the Museum of Fine Arts through July 17, 2016.
http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/megacities-asia