Ai Weiwei – Remembering, 2009, 100x1000cm, Haus der Kunst, München (Germany)
ABOUT REMEBERING
In 2009, Ai Weiwei created a large 10x100m installation, made out of 9000 children’s backpacks. Displayed on the facade of the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany, each backpack represents a life lost in the earthquake that took place in the Chinese province of Sichuan in 2008.
Ai used five different colors that make up the sentence For seven years she lived happily on this earth in Chinese lettering, a sentence with which a mother of one of the earthquake victims commemorated her daughter. The bright, vibrant colors, such as blue, red, yellow and green reflect the psyche of a child, their joy and innocence. In addition, the colors have been used for the Toys R Us logo.
ABOUT AI WEIWEI
Ai is known as one of China’s most provocative and vocal artists. His focus on human rights and social change eventually led to his detainment by Chinese authorities for nearly three months in 2011. The Chinese government later supplied charges of tax evasion against Ai, which he vehemently denies. Since his detainment, Ai has been kept under constant surveillance by the government—a circumstance that has led him to create a series of new works.
Ai Weiwei – Remembering (detail), 2009, 100x1000cm, Haus der Kunst, München (Germany)
Ai Weiwei – Remembering (detail), 2009, 100x1000cm, Haus der Kunst, München (Germany)
Ai Weiwei – Remembering (detail), 2009, 100x1000cm, Haus der Kunst, München (Germany)
Ai Weiwei – Remembering (detail), 2009, 100x1000cm, Haus der Kunst, München (Germany)
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Independent non-profit arts organization established in 2011 in Seoul, South Korea. Projects in 1/3 of the world's countries.
By Movie review: Ai Weiwi: Never Sorry | Inside the World of Amy June 16, 2014 - 2:55 am
[…] photos of the area after the earthquake and posted them on his blog. He highlighted the tragedy in an exhibit in Germany, affixing thousands of backpacks—reminiscent of the hundreds of backpacks that littered the […]
By Keith Haring – reflection, response, renew | Transformation through Transcendence January 28, 2015 - 6:52 pm
[…] out a mother’s cry in Chinese: “For seven years she lived happily on the earth.” (https://publicdelivery.org/ai-weiwei-remembering-haus-der-kunst-muenchen-2009/ accessed on 28 January 2015). The power of naming, of image-text to arrest our daily life rhythm, […]
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[…] scandal, and social injustices into the global sphere. One of my personal favourites is his “Remembering” installation, composed of 9000 backpacks commemorating the children who passed away in […]
By Ai Weiwei – “Remembering” | Creative Resistance April 16, 2015 - 9:58 am
[…] publicdelivery. (n.d.). Ai Weiwei’s 1.000 square meter large installation in Germany. Retrieved from https://publicdelivery.org/ai-weiwei-remembering-haus-der-kunst-muenchen-2009/ […]
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[…] outsized scale of many of the pieces in this show seem similar to his hypertrophied assembly of 1,000 feet of plastic backpacks on the facade of the Haus der Kunst that remember the lives […]
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[…] photos of the area after the earthquake and posted them on his blog. He highlighted the tragedy in an exhibit in Germany, affixing thousands of backpacks—reminiscent of the hundreds of backpacks that littered the […]
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[…] art pieces that cause such an impact in the government and the people, is his public work “Remembering.” Which was located in the facade of the Haus der Kunst in Munich from October of 2009 to […]
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[…] painstakingly straightened it and assembled it into spare elegiac memorials. In his installation, Remembering, he arranged 9,000 backpacks on the facade of the Haus der Kunst in Munich to represent the young […]
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[…] https://publicdelivery.org/ai-weiwei-remembering-haus-der-kunst-muenchen-2009/ […]
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[…] of schoolchildren in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake reflects this methodology (e.g. Remembering, 2009), as do his recent installations in Amsterdam (#SafePassage, 2016), Berlin (2016), Florence […]