Ai wei­wei is a Chi­nese artist who bases his work upon the polit­i­cal and cul­tural tur­moil of china. He uses the resources of the coun­try to show how eas­ily they are exploited. Using the folk­lore and craft of the native vil­lage peo­ple Ai Wei­wei cre­ated the large instal­la­tion work Sun­flower Seeds. This piece con­sists of hun­dreds of pounds of painstak­ingly crafted porce­lain sun­flower seeds. They are cre­ated in a small vil­lage in china that has a his­tory in ceram­ics. The vil­lage peo­ple depend on the ceramic fac­tory and have a long­stand­ing tra­di­tion in mass pro­duc­tion based on human man­power and ancient tech­nol­ogy. The clay and glazes are cre­ated by water pow­ered crush­ing devices and the rock itself is mined by men armed with push carts. The sun­flower seed is an impor­tant sym­bol used by Mao Zedong in Chi­nese Com­mu­nist pro­pa­ganda dur­ing the Cul­tural Rev­o­lu­tion. In these pro­pa­ganda images Mao Zedong would be the Sun and around him the Chi­nese peo­ple rep­re­sented by sun­flower seeds.

Ai Weiwei’s Sun­flower Seeds will be on dis­play at Tate Mod­ern until May 2011

Ai Wei­wei is cur­rently under house arrest in China to pre­vent him from protest­ing the demo­li­tion of his recently con­structed stu­dio in Shang­hai. Upon the struc­tures com­ple­tion the artist was informed that the con­struc­tion was ille­gal and to be torn down or handed over to the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment. In order to pro­mote aware­ness of this injus­tice Ai Wei­wei planned a party to com­mem­o­rate the build­ing which drew enough atten­tion to have him placed under arrest.

Images cour­tesy of tate​.com, for​eign​pol​icy​.com, and guardian​.co​.uk

Tags: Ai Weiwei, ancient technology, Chinese artist, Cultural Revolution, demolition, folklore, painstakingly, Sunflower Seeds, Tate, turmoil of china

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 11th, 2010 at 6:55 pm and is filed under Art, installation.
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