"History", Ai Weiwei has said, "is the missing piece of the puzzle in everything we do". A parallel claim can be made about Ai himself, whose work as an artist, curator, editor and architect has been a driving force behind the development of experimental Chinese art for over twenty years. Ai’s art practice has largely been defined by his use of historically charged materials, which he disfigures and reconfigures to create iconoclastic sculptures and installations. Defacing a Han Dynasty urn with the Coca-Cola logo or shattering a vessel from the same period, his past works wryly comment on the loss of China’s cultural legacy by reenacting its destruction, leaving viewers aghast and implicating the artist in the process. Since 1997, Ai has also employed master woodworkers to dissect and reassemble Qing Dynasty furniture into strange, hybrid configurations. The seamless construction of these sculptures has an absurd grace that could only be achieved through the most arduous - and inventive - application of ancient Chinese joinery techniques. "Fragments" recycles the material culture of China’s past, but reflects more directly on the country’s present and future. Initially resembling an ancient arbor or a Chinese Stonehenge, "Fragments", 2005 is a large installation comprised of the salvaged beams and pillars of temples that were dismantled with government approval to make way for real estate development in southern China. Eleven massive columns are placed on the floor, outlining a map of China when viewed from above. These splinter and multiply, as additional temple parts, unused wood from Ai’s earlier furniture pieces and an antique table and chairs are all fused into one massive structure - without the use of a single nail. The installation was built by Ai’s skilled artisans using the strict rules of traditional Chinese carpentry. Envisioning history as a series of missing pieces has particular resonance in China today, where, once again, everything old is being destroyed in a maniacal race toward the future. But while the shards of the past are swept out of sight, their absence casts a shadow over all that is new. Ai’s recent works evoke Walter Benjamin’s writing on 19th century Paris: "In the convulsions of the commodity economy we begin to recognize the monuments of the bourgeoisie as ruins even before they have crumbled". By bringing together the discarded pieces of a bygone past and images of a present already on the edge of decay, Ai reminds us that the totalities that we cling to are illusory. Fragments are all we have.