AO Art Observed™

Ai Weiwei and his sunflower seeds in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, via NY Times

Currently on view in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall is Sunflower Seeds (2010) a work by Chinese artist and political activist Ai Weiwei for the 11th commission in the Unilever Series.  The work is made up of a millions of small hand-crafted porcelain works each sculpted and painted uniquely by Chinese specialists working in workshops in the small town of Jingdezhen. Hundreds of skilled hands worked together to produce the 100 million sunflower seeds poured into the Turbine Hall’s vast space.

Sunflower Seeds (2010) by Ai Weiwei , via Tate Modern

More text and images after the jump…

Installation view of Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds (2010), via The Guardian

Porcelain is often immediately associated with China. In order to create such as work, the artist employed traditional methods of crafting engaging the viewer to ponder the meaning of the “Made in China” explosion and the cultural and historical geopolitics which go along with it.

Sunflower Seeds (2010) by Ai Weiwei, via Tate Modern

Just days after the exhibition opened Tate Modern prevented access to visitors who wished to walk over the millions of porcelain sunflower seeds due to health and safety concerns over ceramic dust generated by walking on top of the seeds.  The installation is meant to be experienced by walking through the artistically conceived sunflower seeds and since the closing of the installation viewers can only view the exhibition from behind a restricted area.   Viewers can now behold the installation from the Turbine Hall bridge or the viewed closely from the east end of the Turbine Hall in Level 1.  Nevertheless, the scale and vision of the work is commendable despite its unanticipated hindrances.

Sunflower Seeds (2010) by Ai Weiwei, via Tate Modern

The exhibition comes at the same time as the award of Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Ai Weiwei was recently placed on house arrest in Beijing on the orders from the senior Communist party officials in Shanghai who wanted to stop him from holding a celebration of the forced destruction of his Shanghai art studio. The officials were reprimanding the 53-year old artist for promising to feed guests 10,000 “he xie” or “river crabs”, a homonym for the word “harmony” in Chinese, as well as talk of a “harmonious society.”

Ai Weiwei holding his sunflower seeds in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, via The Guardian

China’s most famous artist, renowned especially for his role as artistic collaborator to the Bird’s Nest Stadium at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, the artist is also a voice of great dissent. Ai Weiwei demands free speech and democracy for the people of China and came to a particular confrontation with the Chinese government over his investigations into the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and the deaths of many school children which followed. As a result, he was severely beaten by the police leading him to suffer a minor brain hemorrhage which had to be corrected with surgery in Germany.

Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds in the Tate Turbine Hall, via The Independent

Related Links:
Exhibition Page [Tate Modern]
Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds; Canaletto and his Rivals [The Guardian]
Tate Modern’s Sunflower Seeds the world in the palm of your hand [The Guardian]
Painting 100 Million Sunflower Seeds: A Futile Art Endeavor? [NPR]
Tate Closes Ai WeiWei’s Sunflower Seeds [Saatchi]
Tate Modern Closes Access to Sunflower Seeds [NY Times ]
What Happened Next? Sunflower Seeds [The Guardian]
Ai Weiwi Blocked from Leaving China [The Telegraph]
Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds, Tate Modern, review [The Telegraph]
Ai Weiwei interview for Tate Modern Unilever Series [The Telegraph]                                                                                                Tate stops visitors trampling on sunflower seeds [The Guardian]
Letter from China: Ai Weiwei at the Tate Turbine Hall [The New Yorker]

-R.A. Proctor

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 29th, 2010 at 12:43 am and is filed under Go See. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.