This single piece of art that uses 1,200 bikes is one giant F-U, a finger in the eye of the Chinese government. Its creator, artist Ai Weiwei, may have contributed to the incredible “Bird’s Nest” Beijing Olympic Stadium in 2008, but in that same year, the year of the massive Sichuan earthquake, Weiwei accused his own Chinese government of covering up the corruption that lead to the deaths of more than 8,000 schoolchildren killed in faulty schools that collapsed. When parents protested over the coverup, his blog released the names of more than 5,000 of the children, and then he created a piece of art that used 8,000 children’s backpacks to spell out in Chinese characters the words: “She lived happily for seven years in this world,” the distraught phrase of a grieving mother. This and his other anti-government work landed Weiwei in prison; he’s since been released, but is under house arrest in Beijing.

So exhibiting his work in Taiwan, for the current show (fittingly called  ”Ai Weiwei, Absent“) at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, is another way for Weiwei to protest, since Taiwan and China are officially enemies. More irony: Weiwei cut and welded together the giant labyrinthine work for the show out of bikes from the Shanghai Forever Company…which is a state-run Chinese bike brand…

There are 21 other Weiwei works on exhibit in the Taiwan show, including a hand sculpted security camera and a photograph of a person’s arm making an obscene gesture in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Weiwei says the “Forever Bicycles” piece represents his homeland in a state of flux, and it’s not hard to see that a country once united by the humble bicycle is now divided by them; those who still ride don’t do it for exercise but because they can’t afford a car. The bike is the symbol of the old China, but the new country, the one that’s adopted the trappings of Western society, has yet to embrace its messy side: democracy.

Tagged as: activism, bicycle, daily bike