Ai Weiwei sculpture rolls back to Forks

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This article was published 25/10/2024 (526 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Nearly 1,300 bicycles are parking at The Forks this week, locking a world-renowned sculptor’s work into downtown Winnipeg for what could be an extended stay.

A globally touring exhibition by Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei, Forever Bicycles last rolled into town in 2019 after a two-year residency in Austin, Texas. Composed of 1,266 stainless steel bicycles made by Shanghai’s Forever Co. — a desirable brand in the artist’s youth — the installation’s nine-metre-high, site-specific design is both visually striking and globally meaningful, with onlookers just as likely to be awed by its honeycombed geometry as its geopolitical commentary on mobility, mass production and monolithic repetition.

The installation was erected in time for the final pre-pandemic Nuit Blanche and was disassembled in October 2022. A smaller version, composed of 18 bicycles, was unveiled outside the University of Manitoba’s new Desautels Concert Hall last year and is expected to stay until September 2028.

In an article in the university’s alumni blog, school of art director Edward Jurkowski called the display “a life-affirming work” whose presence on campus was “a major coup for the University of Manitoba.”

The cost of both the original Forks exhibition and the university’s version — which stands nearly four metres by about two — was sponsored by local arts-minded philanthropist Michael Nesbitt.

The Forks Renewal Corporation will formally reveal the work on Tuesday, Oct. 29, with spokespeople promising that details about the exhibit’s duration would be announced that day. But crews were on-site Thursday afternoon assembling the velosculpture, disposing of the wooden crates the bikes arrived in and drawing onlookers to remark on the installation.

A woman from Calgary who didn’t want her name used had a typical response. “If this is art, maybe I should be an artist too,” said the visitor, in town for a vacation.

Kathleen MacKenzie, in Winnipeg before a visit to Churchill this weekend, trained her Nikon digital camera on the in-progress installation, but struggled to find a proper angle past the cranes. As she gave up on taking a photo, MacKenzie discussed her own reaction to the exhibit.

MacKenzie, who visited every province in Canada before landing in Manitoba earlier this week from her home “one mile from Disneyland,” said she’d seen a similar exhibit in Europe, where the Southern California resident was shocked by the number of daily cyclists.

In her hometown, she said, bicycles are always treated as less important than motor vehicles, recalling a recent fatal collision that killed multiple family members, including children. The driver was drunk, she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

A few moments later, MacKenzie was sharing her affection for her childhood Raleigh bike.

While Ai’s sculpture has explicit political overtones, MacKenzie’s reaction to Forever Bicycles shows the layers of meaning embedded within its reflective tires and handlebars, especially as cycling rises in popularity in cities such as Winnipeg.

The growing local interest in two-wheeled travel is statistically supported by the blinking bike counter along Fort Gibraltar Trail on the way into The Forks site. On Thursday, 175 cyclists made their way past the sensor.

In 2016, there were 87,428 cyclists recorded by the bike counter; as of Thursday at 1 p.m., there were 177,679 so far in 2024, representing a 103 per cent increase.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com