Conversation

It’s actually part of Ai Weiwei and Jacob Appelbaum’s 2015 work, “Panda to Panda.” The panda is stuffed with shredded government documents and a memory card containing information leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. A series of these pandas were sent to dissidents around the world, creating what Mr. Appelbaum called a “distributed backup” of the politically sensitive documents they had published. “Panda to Panda” is also an art piece about subverting state power, surveillance, and secrets. This particular panda, the wall text notes, is on loan from Julian Assange.