2008–12

Straight: 150 tonnes of rusty washers recovered from the wreckage caused by the Sichuan earthquake are laid out on the ground like a telluric wave and straightened by hand, as a warning to those who used cheap materials to build the schools that collapsed, killing over 5000 students whose names, which Ai Weiwei discovered through a grass-roots enquiry, are printed on the walls of the room. Too few washers had been used in the buildings’ construction as a result of an economy drive, which led to the students’ death.