Ai Weiwei

Roots

Skulpturen im Spannungsfeld von industrieller Produktion und Natur

Ai Weiwei (b. Beijing, 1957; lives and works in Cambridge and Berlin) is one of the best-known conceptual artists in the world today. His installations and sculptures turn the spotlight on global ills. The sprawling iron sculptures in his new series, titled Roots, are casts of the root systems of the Pequi tree, a critically endangered species native to Brazil. The artist discovered these giant trees, which are over a century old, during a trip through the rainforest of Bahía and first assembled them in sculptural compositions for the exhibition Raiz at the OCA Pavilion in São Paulo (2018). After the show closed, molds were made of the wooden sculptures that served to produce these cast-iron replicas. The result is an imposing ensemble that raises urgent questions concerning the consequences of industrialization and globalization. Alarmed by the rapid destruction of tropical forests, Ai Weiwei has created a body of work that squarely confronts the repercussions of climate change. The book documents the genesis of the colossal root sculptures. Essays by Bob Bloomfield, Marcello Dantas, Robert Macfarlane, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Peter-Klaus Schuster, Günther Vogt, and Christina Yu Yu explore the works from a wide variety of angles, drawing on anthropology and sociology, Chinese and European history, botany and ecology.