Chinese artist to erect Sichuan quake monument in Austrian alps

Jun 14, 2010, 21:02 GMT

Vienna - Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has created a monument for the victims of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake by sending a giant rock from the province to be erected on an Austrian mountain peak, his Austrian project partners said Monday.

A leading Chinese conceptual artist and architect, Ai is well known abroad, not least because he has questioned the Chinese government as to why so many children died in allegedly poorly built schools during the May 2008 earthquake.

The bearded artist selected a rock weighing 4 tons which was shaken loose by the earthquake, and sent it by ship and truck to Austria, where it arrived Monday in the mountain community of Ramsau.

On June 23, the boulder is scheduled to be flown by helicopter to the Hoher Dachstein, a 2,995-metre-high peak.

'Right near the peak there is a small viewing platform, and it will be placed there,' said Martin Novak, spokesman of the Regionale10 art festival that commissioned the piece.

Ai and other activists have had to pay a personal price for investigating the effects of the earthquake that killed at least 80,000 people.

Ai suffered a cerebral haemorrhage last year that he said was caused when he was beaten by police in Chengdu while he was supporting fellow activist Tan Zuoren during his trial.

Last week, a court in Sichuan upheld a five-year sentence against Tan. He was found guilty of 'inciting subversion of state power' because he had made a list of children who died in the earthquake.