Ai Weiwei displays 500 cast-iron helmets in Sydney

On 25 September the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei unveiled a work commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney. The installation, entitled "Mushrooms", consists of 500 cast-iron soldiers' helmets, which the artist has arranged in ten even rows on the Tallawoladah lawn. This lawn in front of the museum is considered the most visited green space in Sydney. The work is some 40 metres long. The helmets reproduce various models of twentieth-century combat headgear, complete with their inner lining. The artist has set them on a raised metal platform, crossed down the middle by a walkway, so that visitors may stroll between the rows.

The work is the second project in the series of commissions named after Neil Balnaves. The Australian philanthropist and businessman Neil Balnaves died in 2022, aged 77, when his boat was wrecked off the coast of Tahiti. The first commission in the series went last year to the British sculptor Thomas J. Price, who installed a three-metre gilded bronze head of a woman, turned towards Sydney Harbour. Ai Weiwei's installation will remain on the lawn for seven months.

The artist took as his starting point the dispute provoked by Germany in early 2022, when the German government refused to supply Ukraine with weapons and offered 5,000 helmets instead