Liu Wei’s Met Facade Comission Reflects Our Moment

Beijing-based artist Liu Wei has returned to New York with Speculation (2026), a new series commissioned for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Genesis Facade Commission and installed at the museum’s main entrance through next June. The sculptures, made from metal and fiberglass composites, combine abstracted archaeological and architectural references with reflective surfaces, modernist spheres, and elements that appear bound by nails, cords, ropes, and metal bars. Two primary works incorporate enormous hands at their bases, evoking distorted mudras and emphasizing human agency in shaping imagined futures. Met curator Lesley Ma said in a press statement that the project asks viewers to confront “our culture’s relentless processes of making and becoming,” and the article notes Liu’s long-standing engagement with the destabilizing effects of China’s rapid urbanization since 1978.

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