Ai Wei Wei “Bang” Installation at Venice Art Biennale 2013

Ai Wei Wei recently opened his “Disposition” exhibition at Venice Art Biennale 2013. The Chinese artist decided to present the ‘Bang’ project, an installation rooted in the artistic traditions of his native China, something that the pioneer has sought to revive since the Cultural Revolution, a period he grew up in and suffered under. And he has chosen to revive these pieces of Chinese tradition with equal vigor, often creating installations that astound the viewer with scale dwarfs with the seemingly unremarkable nature of the items that compose them. With his most recognized work to date, Sunflower Seeds, he mobilized a village of 1600 artisans to produce enough porcelain seeds to cover a 1000 square-meter hall. This latest installation takes 866 three-legged wooden tools, themselves made by traditional craftsman, and allows them to freely leave the limits of the floor and fill the space around them almost in a celebratory movement of upheaval. The installation will remain on display, along with Ai’s decidedly more somber ‘S.A.C.R.E.D‘ until November 24.