About

Designed specifically for Haines’ new Fort Mason gallery, Everyday Monuments comprises 18 works in materials such as LEGO, marble, and wood, each a synthesis of complex historical, cultural, and political references. The exhibition is Ai’s first solo show in the Bay Area since 2016.

The exhibition marks the San Francisco debut of Ai’s Zodiac (2018), a series of twelve panels depicting the mythical animals of the traditional Chinese Zodiac, a system ascribing personality traits based on one’s year of birth. Created from thousands of brightly hued LEGO bricks, they appear in the gallery in astrological order. This body of work is rooted in the twelve monumental bronze animal heads that once comprised an epic water clock known as the Zodiac Fountain in Yuanmingyuan, Beijing’s Old Summer Palace. The original heads were looted by Anglo-French troops who took part in the destruction of Yuanmingyuan in 1860 during the Second Opium War. Occasionally resurfacing for sale—most famously, at Christies’ 2009 auction of the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé Collection—only seven Zodiac heads were ultimately recovered.