Was excited and lucky enough to see the Ai Weiwei exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum yesterday. Here’s some of the photos I took during my visit with short descriptions about some of the exhibits (From what I remember).
Ai Weiwei’s most famous work. A three blank and white photo set of Weiwei dropping a priceless urn onto the ground — literally, shattering our ideas of value.
Ye Haiyan is an activist in China, and after making a lot of noise in her hometown, the local authorities raided the home of Ye and her mother, packed them up, all their belongings, and left them on the side of the road. When Weiwei heard of this, he had his people scoop up Haiyan. Weiwei would turn her belongings into a protest that would spread Ya Haiyan’s story wide.
In “Straight”, Weiwei bought thousands of mangled rebars from the poorly-contructed schoolhouses that collapsed during the tragic Sichuan earthquake. Over 4 years, Weiwei’s team would straighten the rebars by hand, ultimately constructing a piece that mirror what looks like a graph on the Richter Scale.
You can catch the Ai Weiwei “According to What?” exhibit at Brooklyn Museum until August 10th.
