Thursday 2 May 2013

Ai Wei Wei



Ai Wei Wei standing in front of his room full of sunflower seeds, Tate Gallery, London in 2010

At the White Rabbit Gallery earlier this year we saw an exhibit by Ai Wei Wei consisting of a large pile of what looked like sunflower seeds.  They were actually individually sculpted seeds made out of porcelain.  I didn’t realize at the time but in 2010 at the Tate Gallery in London there was an installation by Ai Wei Wei of a ROOM full of “sunflower seeds”-over a hundred million of them.  They too, were individually sculpted and painted porcelain “seeds” .   The material of porcelain relates to Chinese tradition of porcelain manufacture.  The sunflower seeds have an association in Chinese history as Chairman Mao was portrayed as the sun in propaganda posters and the Chinese people as sunflowers facing the sun.  The artist also remembers sharing sunflower seeds with his friends when they experienced extreme poverty during the cultural  revolution.  The huge number of seeds make us think about what it means to be an individual in our society and also what we can do as a group.

Ai Wei Wei was born in Beijing in 1957.  His father, Ai Qing, was a great poet and friend of Chairman Mao.  He fell out of favour in 1958 and was exiled to a labour camp on the edge of the Gobi Desert.  The family suffered great hardship, living in a hole in the ground and his father forced to work,  cleaning public toilets, for years.  In 1975 the family was able to return to Beijing and a few years later Ai Wei Wei studied at the Beijing Film Academy.

Ai Wei Wei is a political activist who creates art to make the public aware of particular issues.  He has been critical of the Chinese Government stance on democracy and human rights.  This has lead to police beatings and his arrest and being held for over 2 months without any formal charges.  Have a look at this article about Ai Wei Wei written  in the Daily Mail in Britain.    

No comments:

Post a Comment