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"Forever Bicycles" by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei opens Taipei exhibition

Centrepiece installation by Beijing 'Bird's Nest' National Stadium designer is 10m high and contains 1,200 bikes...

Despite being otherwise engaged with the Chinese authorities, dissident Ai Weiwei has nevertheless opened his show 'Ai Weiwei absent' at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan's capital.

The iconoclastic artist famous in the UK for his ten million handpainted ceramic sunflower seeds at the Tate Modern Turbine Hall last year has upset his government with such artworks as forming the backpacks of 8,000 schoolchildren killed in the recent earthquake into a giant artwork spelling out in Chinese characters "She lived happily for seven years in this world," the distraught phrase of a grieving mother. He is now effectively under house arrest in China and banned from travelling abroad.

According to the 'Ai Weiwei absent' programme notes the installation is made from over 1,000 bicycles. "Its layered labyrinthine space creates what appears to be a moving abstract shape that symbolizes the way in which the social environment in China is changing."

Ai Weiwei has previous form with using bicycles in his work and although this 'Forever Bicycles' piece is the most he has used before, according to Carlton Reid of the UK trade magazine BikeBiz they always come from the Shanghai Forever Co, a state-run Chinese bike company in existence since 1940.

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WolfieSmith | 12 years ago
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Beautiful work.

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GreenMark | 12 years ago
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Hopefully both he and the piece will make it to the Tate Modern some time soon.

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Rob 105 rider | 12 years ago
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What an amazing and beautiful piece of art incorporating our beloved machine the bicycle. I hope weiwei is released from house arrest soon.

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