"Chinese artist, thinker and activist, Ai Weiwei is most famously known for his photographic artwork, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995). It incorporates what Ai has called a “cultural readymade.” The work captures Ai as he drops a 2,000-year-old ceremonial Han dynasty urn, allowing it to smash to the floor at his feet. Not only did this artifact have considerable value, it also had symbolic and cultural worth. The Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) is considered a defining period in the history of Chinese civilization, and to deliberately break an iconic form from that era was considered equivalent to tossing away an entire inheritance of cultural meaning about China. With this work, Ai began his ongoing use of antique readymade objects, demonstrating his questioning attitude toward how and by whom cultural values are created.
Some were outraged by this work, calling it an act of desecration. Furthermore, many believed that it reinforced prejudices regarding the absence of cultural worth present in East-Asian and Chinese artefacts. Ai countered by saying, “Chairman Mao used to tell us that we can only build a new world if we destroy the old one.” This statement refers to the widespread destruction of antiquities during China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and the instruction that in order to build a new society one must destroy the si jiu (Four Olds): old customs, habits, culture, and ideas. By dropping the urn, Ai lets go of the social and cultural structures that impart value. Furthermore, his piece of work was meant to challenge Chinese authoritarianism which for Ai had tarnished the values embodied by traditional Chinese culture. "