The artist assembled this huge map of modern China in 2004 out of the traditional tieli (iron) wood used to build temples during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Those old temples had been dismantled to make way for new construction.
According to What? The Ai Weiwei Retrospective in Washington D.C.
The show takes its name from a 1964 Jasper Johns work and explores the controversial Chinese artist-activist's attempts to make art a way of looking at the world--and challenging its authorities--rather than accumulating artifacts.