Roots

Sculptures in the field of tension between industrial productionand nature. Ai Weiwei (b. Beijing, 1957; lives and works in Cambridge andBerlin) 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 Bahia and first assembled them in sculptural compositions for theexhibition Raiz at the OCA Pavilion in Sao Paulo (2018). After theshow closed, molds were made of the wooden sculptures that served to produce these cast-iron replicas. The result is animposing ensemble that raises urgent questions concerning theconsequences of industrialization and globalization. Alarmed by therapid destruction of tropical forests, Ai Weiwei has created a bodyof work that squarely confronts the repercussions of climatechange. The book documents the genesis of the colossal rootsculptures. Essays by Bob Bloomfield, Marcello Dantas, Robert Macfarlane, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Peter-Klaus Schuster, GuntherVogt, 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.