With a sly nod to Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel, this extraordinary sculpture multiplies a readymade symbol of Chinese mobility: the popular Forever brand of bicycles, a once-common form of transportation in Chinese cities.

Forever Duo (Stainless Steel Bicycles in Gilding) is a complex allusion to freedom, social mobility, mass production, and China's changing socio-economic landscape. By utilizing an object that symbolizes both physical and social movement — while removing components essential to its function — Ai Weiwei memorializes an aspect of China's past, while alluding to the human cost in its age of rapid industrialization and economic development.