On August 14th 2014 several prominent statues within the city centre and the southern suburbs of Cape Town got redressed in green blankets, equipped with miner gear or carrying grocery bags. The statues – mainly of which represent colonial figures – were redressed in light of what has come to be known as the Marikana Massacre: the shooting of 34 miners by the local police force of Marikana, South Africa on August 16th, 2012.
On May 12, 2008, a massive earthquake in China’s Sichuan province killed approximately 90,000 people. Ai Weiwei created this serpentine sculpture, made of backpacks, to commemorate the more than 5,000 school children who were killed when their shoddily constructed schools collapsed.