The onlooker at bottom left gives some sense of the scale of this construction, as does the image of the nearby Canadian Museum of Human Building at the bottom centre. The project is called Forever Bicycles, and it consists of 1266 bicycle frames welded together, soaring more than 30 feet into the sky.
The creator is famed international artist Ai Weiwei, known both for adventurous works and committed activist ideas. This project came about as a tribute to the most popular form of transportation in his native China. The design incorporates a feeling of movement and endless depth against an impossibly blue prairie sky. Its presence at The Forks, the traditional gathering place of indigenous peoples at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, is highly symbolic.
“Life is Art. Art is Life. I never separate it.” ~ Ai Weiwei
