Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads
Monday, March 30, 2026
Get up close with Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (2010) at the Olympic Sculpture Park, where you can walk among these monumental sculptures. Consisting of 12 zodiac head sculptures arranged in an arcing semicircle, each animal in Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads stands over ten feet tall and weighs over 1500 pounds. The sculptures are installed in order of the traditional Chinese zodiac cycle: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Ram, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Boar.
The works reconceive the 12 zodiac heads that decorated an 18th-century Qing imperial fountain before they were looted during the Second Opium War (1856–60). Seven are based on the original heads that have survived, and Ai researched and reimagined the five animals still missing to complete the zodiac. This work embodies Ai’s long-standing questioning of our tendency to value the real over the fake and the original over the copy.
Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads joins over twenty monumental sculptures in the park, including The Eagle (1971) by Alexander Calder, Wake (2004) by Richard Serra, and Seattle Cloud Cover (2004-2006) by Teresita Fernández. See this temporary installation situated in the Ackerly Meadow, just outside of the PACCAR Pavilion at the Olympic Sculpture Park. Seattle’s largest green space, the nine-acre sculpture park, is free and open daily from thirty minutes before sunrise to thirty minutes after sunset.
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Opens 30 minutes prior to sunrise
Closes 30 minutes after sunset