‘It is not a political joke’: Ai Weiwei unveils 500 cast-iron combat helmets in Sydney

Titled “Mushrooms”, the work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia reflects nations’ feeble responses to crises and the artist’s uncertainty about the future.

Ai Weiwei’s latest work is “a metaphor and a warning” of how quickly humanity could slip into an epoch of darkness, the Chinese contemporary artist tells The Art Newspaper. The work, titled Mushrooms, comprises 500 cast-iron combat helmets in ten uniform rows. According to a statement from the artist, the fungal title refers to “growth in darkness, nuclear mushroom clouds, and in Chinese, the term also suggests endless delays”.

Mushrooms was unveiled on Friday 25 September as the new Neil Balnaves Tallawoladah Lawn Commission outside Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, and will remain on view for seven months. The commission is named after the Australian philanthropist and businessman Neil Balnaves, who was 77 when he died in a boating accident near Tahiti in 2022.