The book accompanied the Forge exhibition held at Mary Boone Gallery in New York, showing a series of works by Chinese contemporary artist and activist Ai Weiwei.
The Forge project itself was a major installation exploring themes of memory, loss, institutional responsibility, and artistic reconstruction.
A magnitude eight earthquake occurred in Sichuan, China, on 12 May 2008. In December that year, Ai Weiwei Studio began a “citizens’ investigation” on behalf of the student victims of the disaster. The surveyors collected the names of 5,196 children, along with their birth dates and the school they attended.
This investigation revealed that the collapse of the schools was due to construction utilizing poor quality materials, a factor which the Chinese government subsequently tried to cover up.
The exhibition is an installation derived from twisted steel rebar from the schools that collapsed during the earthquake.
