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| 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.
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