Continuing on its North American tour, Ai WeiWei’s traveling exhibition According to What? recently opened at the Brooklyn Museum. The show consists of more than 40 works, including large scale installations, photography and sculpture, which together portray Ai’s range as artist and activist. Several of the installations are created by collecting or assembling many of one type of object, such as backpacks, crabs, bicycles, pearls or rebar, to highlight the tension between an individual and a society, especially one as populous as China. And for this incarnation of the show, Ai added a powerful recent work entitled S.A.C.R.E.D., which consists of six large iron boxes within which viewers can glimpse dioramas portraying daily scenes from his 81-day detention by the Chinese government in 2011. According to What? is on display at the Brooklyn Museum through August 10.
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