Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has recreated the famous image of Aylan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian child who drowned in Turkey last year, by staging a photo of himself lying face down on a beach in Greece.
The photograph of the child lying facedown on a beach in Turkey triggered international outrage. The helpless toddler became the face of the refugee crisis in Europe.
The Chinese artist is famous for works addressing human rights abuses, official corruption and the collision between Chinese culture and Western consumerism.
Ai posed last week on a pebbly beach on the Greek island of Lesbos for one of India’s largest English-language news magazines, India Today.
Rohit Chawla, the magazine’s photographer and visual director, captured the picture.
The photograph was displayed at an art fair in New Delhi over the weekend and many visitors took pictures of it.
Ai has also set up a studio on Lesbos where he is working on several projects with refugee-related themes. Lesbos is the main entry point for refugees seeking a better life in Europe.
Ai said that he had decided to withdraw his works from two Danish museums out of deep anger at a new law that allows Denmark to seize valuables from migrants.
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