Ai wei wei- sunflower seeds Flashcards
date
2010
medium
Porcelain
*150 tonnes of porcelain in the turbine hall, brought in container ships from China.
how many seeds
100 million handmade seeds, five times the number of Beijing’s population (1.3 billion Chinese people) and nearly a quarter of China’s internet users.
scale
500ft x 75ft when installed
*Covering 1,000 square meters to a depth of ten centimetres.
The installation comprises lots of small objects, but creates something monumental.
The objects together create an infinite landscape.
Either a vast sculpture, or one to examine at close range. Each piece is part of a whole – about the individual’s relationship with the masses
location
Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London
*Poured into the interior of the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall’s vast industrial space, the seeds form a seemingly infinite landscape, especially when viewer from the Turbine Hall bridge.
*The delicately patterned grey and white seeds blend almost invisibly into the muted grey tones of the Turbine Hall’s concrete floor.
subject matter (literal)
*‘Sunflower seeds’ is a very large-scale installation consisting of 100 million hand-crafted husks.
each seed is manmade and intricately hand-painted porcelain which simulates nature
subject matter (metaphorical)
*It is metaphorical in subject matter, alluding to the globalisation and mass-production in China that caters to western consumerism, and to the deemed insignificant element at the bottom of the production chain: thousands of cheap labourers, assembly lines in gigantic factories, and tedious procedures.
‘Sunflower Seeds’ is a work closely related to the society, politics and economy in China.
powerful metaphor for the precarious nature of individualism and collectivism. Each seed is a unique object among the 100million seeds. And yet one seed is synonymous with the whole.
lifelike features
*Each sunflower husk is life-sized and of realistic scale
*These individual sculptures are realistic and mimetic
production
*Not industrially produced, found, or a ‘ready-made’ object.
*Ai Weiwei tends to have very little involvement in the production of his work in recent years. Other people implement his ideas, with his many assistants.
*Ai used a dedicated team in Jingdezhen, the famous ‘porcelain city’ in southern China’s Jiangxi Province. This project employed 1600 artisans.
*Not mass-produced in a factory ‘Made in China’ style, instead specialists in small-scale workshops made this in ‘cottage industry’.
the sunflower seeds are hand-painted with black slip (liquid clay mixed with ash), which links the sculptures to the practice of calligraphy with ¾ deliberate strokes. Women could paint from home, and painted 2.5 kilos a day (1750 seeds a day!).
The process of making this work was elaborate and incredibly time consuming. Making porcelain takes twenty – thirty different kinds of processes.
*The very labour-intensive process involved in making the seeds has illuminated the mass-manufacturing practices in China that have been little understood by the West until recently. Surprisingly, much is still made by hand in China where machines are expensive and labour is cheap. Ai Weiwei draws the audience’s attention to this socio-political issue.
*2.5 years of preparation were needed to make this sculpture
how was it meant to be recieved initially
*It was originally both optic (to be looked at) and haptic (to be touched)
originally raked by assistants, like stones in a zen garden.
however, Foot traffic has caused a lot of ceramic dust which is not good for public health.
*It was initially an interactive sculpture, to be experienced when walked across, which makes the viewer performative. Shortly after it opened it was no longer possible to walk on the surface of the work, but visitors could walk close to the edges of the sunflower seed landscape on the west and north sides
ai wei wei father
his father was a famous poet and was denounced as a ‘rightist’ and was ‘re-educated through labour’ during the Cultural Revolution which saw the Despotic Maoist regime strip individuals of personal freedom.
ai wei wei social and political interests
Ai Weiwei is deeply interested in the social aspects of society, particularly the need for individuals to express themselves freely and be an active participant in society. in other word INDIVIDUALISM
Ai Weiwei has been highly critical of the Chinese government, particularly, the government’s position on issues of democracy and human rights.
Given his political motivations and personal censorship from the Chinese government it is unsurprising that this sculpture is a powerful commentary on the human condition and the struggle for the universal human values of freedom and open society.
Ai wei wei critical quote on individualism
“Modern Chinese cultural history is one that scorns the value of the individual; it is a history of suppressing humanity and spirituality”
consumerism and mass production
*Arguably this is all about consumerism, mass-production and blind production – China is blindly producing for the Western market. Equally the seeds are useless because they cannot grow, and they cannot offer sustenance, but they metaphorically suggest human compassion.
CRITICAL QUOTE
my work very much relates to this blind production of things…. The process of continuously doing something that’s not really useful in such a massive way and takes such a long time”.
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE OF SUNFLOWER SEEDS
Sunflower seeds are a common street snack shared with friends in China, and during childhoods in poverty (eg during the Cultural Revolution era) it was an essential part of everyday life
Ai remembers the sharing of sunflower seeds as a gesture of human compassion, providing a space for pleasure, friendship and kindness during a time of extreme poverty, repression and uncertainty.
sunflower seeds are sold by urban street vendors. For Ai, a Beijing native, they evoked happy memories of wandering the city with friends. By 2010, however, due to a series of fines, arrests, and brutal beatings, he was essentially a prisoner in his own city. In this light, his seeds, cast on the ground, evoke an oppressed, downtrodden society, far from the ideal that Mao described.
INDIVIDUALITY OF EACH SEED
The individuality of the seeds forces a number of questions about individuality, and individual social responsibility. These have been described as ‘seeds of hope’; they are seeds of change, perhaps. This work may be interpreted as the power of individuals consciously uniting into an overwhelming mass – an ocean.
POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF SUNFLOWER SEEDS
Propaganda images depicted Chairman Mao as the sun and the mass of people as sunflowers turning towards him.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE USE OF PORCELAIN
In the classical sense, porcelain in China is the highest art form, and belongs to the Imperial Court. In fact, it is almost synonymous with Chinese culture
*There is a long Chinese tradition of ceramics and porcelain in China - 7000 terracotta army warriors, and painting strokes can be linked to calligraphy
significance of using slip instead of glaze
*The way the sunflower seeds are hand-painted with black slip (liquid clay mixed with ash), which links the sculptures to the practice of calligraphy with ¾ deliberate strokes. Women could paint from home, and painted 2.5 kilos a day (1750 seeds a day!).
*Ai Weiwei used slip without glaze; an unusual choice because porcelain is characteristically glazed. The porcelain of the seeds has been treated more like stoneware.
background process of making porcelain
porcelain takes twenty – thirty different kinds of processes.
oAll processed in the local area.
oAll natural refinery. Same machines for 1000 years.
oPorcelain stone is excavated by hand, pulverised and mixed by hand.
oPowder is then mixed with water to create a cream.
oCreates a paste which is thrown into moulds and the water evaporates and it hardens.
oThey clay is hand-pressed into millions of pieces that are baked and dumped into large sacks.
oClay is fired to 1300 degrees and painted then fired again at 800
who was it sponsered by
*Sponsored by Unilever as part of Tate Modern’s Turbine hall ‘The Unilever Series’. By 2010, after 10 years of this enduring sponsorship over 24 million people had gone to the space
*Sponsored by Unilever as part of Tate Modern’s Turbine hall ‘The Unilever Series’. By 2010, after 10 years of this enduring sponsorship over 24 million people had gone to the space..
*Ironically then, this sculpture was inspired by communist symbolism but sponsored by Western capitalism.
*The Industrial space of the Turbine Hall highlights this dichotomy.
influence of andy Warhol
oAndy Warhol ‘Mao’ (1973). Paint and silkscreen image of Chinese totalitarian ruler, Mao challenged President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. This image related to the propagandistic representations of Mao displayed throughout China during the Cultural Revolution. The mass-produced product smacks of the capitalism antithetical to communism.
