Living in smog-choked Beijing has inspired Chinese artist Kong Ning to step out in her latest creation -- a wedding dress made of the ubiquitous respiratory masks seen on the streets of her city.
The artist went out dressed in the elaborate outfit, on which she had stuck hundreds of 3M N95 masks. She stood on the street appealing to passersby to take public transport instead of driving, said China Daily.
Kong's demonstration was prompted by the city's pollution levels hitting a 13-month high on Monday.
Beijing has suffered from air pollution for years, in large part due to traffic emissions and coal burning in industrial cities up North. Air pollution kills an estimated 4,000 people each day in the country, a recent study found.
This isn't Kong's first mask-based wedding dress, either. Last October, she wore a different one at the Beijing Exhibition Center, which featured 999 respirators stitched on. The title of the work was "Marry the Blue Sky," and the choice of the wedding dress was symbolic of her desire to care for the environment, she had said in reports [link in Chinese] at the time.
And on January 1 this year, she made a butterfly costume with 365 respiratory masks, and stood at the tourist-heavy Badaling section of the Great Wall of China dressed in it. The piece was meant to symbolize her wish for rebirth for the environment.
The smog has influenced other aspects of her work, too. In this painting titled "Blue Sky Diamond" that she posted to her Weibo account, she's included a face mask in the painting of the woman.
