Following the deadly Sichuan earthquake in 2008 – in which government-built schools collapsed with children inside because of shoddy construction – Ai threw his support behind an investigation into the incident that was started by another Chinese artist. The goal was to collect the names of all the children who died in the earthquake.
Perhaps his most famous act of artistic defiance stemmed from that investigation. He collected children’s backpacks and arranged them so that they spelled out the reaction of one Chinese mother whose child died in the earthquake: “She lived happily for seven years in the world.” The artwork was displayed in Munich.
