Portraits of missing students built in Lego

The chinese artist Ai Weiwei has unveiled portraits of the 43 missing mexican students built in Lego.

the Artworks, which consists of about a million lego bricks, has been presented the night of Friday Danish time at the University Museum of Contemporary Art in Mexico City.

The dissident artist has created portraits as a comment on the still unsolved case of 43 teacher trainees, who disappeared after a demonstration in the mexican city of Iguala in 2014.

Ai Weiwei says that he has chosen to build the works of Lego, since he considers the block as a "democratic" material.

Photo: Reuters

The chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Photo: Reuters

- Everyone can use it, everyone can recognize it, and you can reconstruct it. It is effective, and I love the pixilated sense, he says, during the presentation in Mexico City.

In 2015 got the chinese artist's refusal to buy a large lot lego blocks for a work of art. This was due to the Danish legetøjsgigant could not vouch for, that the popular bricks were used in political projects.

the Case sent Lego out in a contrary headwind. In January 2016, modified Lego its policy, so the company no longer ask customers for the purpose of the purchase of a large batch of blocks to private.

Ai Weiwei will with his new work focusing on the case of the missing students. The case has created international outrage, and is still today a major issue in Mexico.

- You hear of people who are exposed for the pain, you hear that the neighbor's son never returns home, and there goes four years without the government can come to a conclusion. Which government is it? What kind of society is it we live in?, says Ai Weiwei.

The 43 colorful portraits on display at the museum over a timeline of the progress of the case.

the Timeline starts in september 2014, where the students during a demonstration were attacked by a group of corrupt police officers.

In January 2015, presented by the mexican authorities his version of the incident. Here it said that the students had been attacked by a gang, which killed them and burned them in a landfill.

In september 2015 determined a number of independent experts, however, that the official explanation could not possibly be true.

the Experts were appointed by The Inter-American Commission on human Rights (IACHR).

They called on the mexican authorities to reopen the investigation of the case. The then government decided, however, that the case was completed.