At more than 10 feet tall and weighing around 1,500 pounds each, the 12 new statues by renowned artist and political activist Ai Weiwei at Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle are hard to miss.
Ai was born in 1957 in communist China. Shortly after, his father was accused of being an enemy of the revolution, and the family was sent to a remote part of the country. The artist uses his work to confront institutions and leadership, which has gotten him jailed and censored by the Chinese government.
The bronze sculptures are of animal heads — including a monkey, a dragon and a goat — that are positioned in order of the traditional Chinese zodiac cycle. The Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads stand near the park’s pavilion against a backdrop of Puget Sound.
The placement near the water is intentional. The work is based on zodiac heads from a Qing Dynasty imperial fountain that were stolen by British and French troops during the Second Opium War in the 1800s. Only seven of the 12 were recovered, the most recent of which was returned to China in 2020.
Foong Ping, the museum’s Foster Foundation curator for Chinese Art, said Ai used the recovered pieces to make his own. He researched traditional designs of zodiac symbols such as the dragon’s head to make new ones.
"He is a little bit proud of himself,” Foong said. “I think that this is the only set that actually works as a zodiac, because there's 12. The originals no longer work as a Zodiac because some of them do not survive."
The sheer size of the statues made for a challenging installation.
Foong said the museum had to renovate the park to accommodate the artwork, including adding cement foundations for the work.
"The ground isn't level, so we had to, of course, create a solution for that," she said.
Seattle Art Museum had initially said these sculptures would be installed last year to coincide with Ai, Rebel, an exhibition of Ai’s work at the museum’s main location and at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. SAM said it was the artist’s largest U.S. exhibition, featuring photos of him dropping a Han Dynasty Urn and giant iconic paintings recreated with thousands of Legos. The exhibition closed in September. Museum officials declined to say what caused the delay of the sculptures’ installation at the park.
The Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads will be on display until October of 2027.
