Ai Wei Wei

Remember Ai Wei Wei's ordeal from artist disliked by the Chinese government to artist arrested for tax evasion? He's invited to Berlin University for a post as visiting lecturer but can't probably make it because he's to remain in China for a year. He still sees himself as an artist persecuted, and so did the Guggenheim, which led in efforts to liberate him after the world had been notified of his arrest, based on freedom of expression, they thought. While his backpacks seemed poignant in memorializing the death of Chinese schoolchildren in an earthquake that could have had a lesser number of victims if school structures had been safer, where does his new sculpure get its inspiration (see it in New York, by the Plaza Hotel): it's the severed heads of the Chinese astrological signs, floating on their dripping blood as stands. What cut the heads off-the French revolution? Does it commemorate the figures as celebratory of a time birth determined fortune and character, happier times than one in which self worth and personal accomplishment, or better, social justice, determines a life's outcome? Why mourn their loss? I'd celebrate it without getting so graphic about it.