Ai Weiwei: Forever Bicycles

  Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist, has consistently included bicycles in his installations. Ai employed bicycles for the first time in his 2008 piece Very Yao1. His use of bicycles has only grown more extravagant over the years, as can be seen in his piece Forever Bicycles. Ai created his enormous work for Forever Bicycles using bicycles from the Shanghai-based Forever Corporation. The installation's scale and repeated nature were meant to refer to China's well-known large-scale production. 

Forever Bicycles was utilized by the artist in part as a nod to the significant place bicycles hold in Chinese culture. The social context in China was intended to be symbolized by some versions of the piece, which included 10,000 bicycles erected in an area that was 10 meters high and arranged in abstract shapes. (publicdelivery.org)

I love how he was able to create something original out of something as basic as bikes. His work is motivating to me since it encourages me to draw inspiration from my surroundings and create something from nothing.

Images from https://publicdelivery.org/ai-weiwei-forever-bicycles/