Dropping the Vase of the Han Dynasty - SKETCHLINE

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1995

Dropping the Vase of the Han Dynasty

author

Ai Weiwei

description

“Dropping the vase of the Han Dynasty” is difficult to attribute to any kind of art. This is just the action that Ai Weiwei performed and made a picture of. The work consists of three parts, which show how the artist holds an old antique vase in his hands and then drops it, then it shatters to smithereens. With this shocking gesture, the Chinese master wanted to show the wrongness of the desire of the Chinese authorities to build a new world, destroying the old one, that erasing cultural memory is the same barbarism towards the people, as the physical destruction of antiquities.