Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei is an artist able to create deeply political work that is, at the same time, beautiful, poetic and well crafted. Sunflower Seeds, 2010, was commissioned by the Tate Modern for their Turbine Hall, part of the ongoing “Unilever Series,” in which artists are invited to create a sculptural work for this impressive space. At first consideration, Sunflower Seeds appears straightforward: 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds spread out to cover the 100 cubic metre floor of the exhibition hall. The artist’s original intention was for visitors to walk on them. However by the time I saw the exhibition, Sunflower Seeds had been marked off so the public could not walk on the seeds or touch them in any way. Ceramic dust created by the porcelain pieces being ground together by so many visitors was deemed dangerous, and after the third day cordons were put up, effectively changing what had originally been meant as an interactive piece. As a visitor I was able to walk two sides of the installation with the seeds being raked into the corner of the exhibition space.

There is a video that accompanied the exhibition with footage of the artist and others walking on the seeds, the sound similar to that heard on a pebbled beach. While I was disappointed in not being able to fully experience the piece, in retrospect, and in light of all that has happened with the arrest and detainment of the artist over the past months, the barriers added another layer of meaning to this work.

The video became an integral part of understanding the artist’s intention, acting as interpreter to a foreign culture, language, symbolism and landscape. It speaks to the artist’s intent by taking the viewer through the process of creating the work—from digging and processing the porcelain clay to the hand painting of each seed by Chinese porcelain workers, some at tables in their own homes, and briefly telling, in the process, the history of porcelain craftsmanship in China. In an interview, the artist addressed the personal and cultural symbolism of the sunflower seed and showed those of us familiar with Western visual culture how to interpret the political content in this seemingly quiet poetic piece.

In the West we are frequently made aware of statistics relating to China; the population size is beyond comprehension to someone like me who lives in a small Canadian city; yet in contemplating a field of porcelain sunflower seeds I was able to visualize how many units make 100 million. Ai had used cheap labour to manufacture this multitude of unique objects that collectively speak to the idea of the masses, but still are able to evoke the notion of being handmade and hand painted. I was struck, watching the skill with which the artisans used their brushes to apply the black glaze to the white porcelain with certainty, creating the stripes of a sunflower seed. This work, the artist notes, has revitalized, if only temporarily, a manufacturing sector and town that have become redundant. At one point he comments that the 1600 people involved in making this piece do not understand what it is that they are making. As with so many things that are manufactured, the products are beyond the daily sphere of those who toil to make them.

Sunflowers are indigenous North American flowers that were cultivated by Native American tribes for thousands of years before they were introduced to the rest of the world. They were not grown commercially in North America until long after the Russians had adopted them as a food crop, breeding and improving them for their cheap and plentiful oil. It was most likely through the Russians that the Chinese also adopted them as a food crop. In the video, the artist talks about the comfort of always having a pocketful of sunflower seeds when he was young, that they were a constant and reliable source of food during a time when other foods were not readily available. The importance of sunflowers was not just something particular to the artist. In badges, ceramics and other items from the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao is often depicted as the sun shining down on sunflowers, the flowers symbolizing the Chinese people.

At the Tate I was able only to view Sunflower Seeds; I was deprived of the tactility I knew they possessed, and which I knew the artist had intended to share. Instead, I was left to use my imagination and, with the help of a video, to understand what it might feel like to walk on them or let them run through my fingers. I was a visitor, a voyeur to another culture, another landscape, someone in need of an interpreter as I walked the length and the width of the 100 million sunflower seeds contained behind a cordon. Yet these little objects stayed with me over the months—their presence as an artwork, the sheer labour of their making, the layers of content and the beauty of the millions of tiny objects amassed to create a whole. All of this resulted in something more than a visual experience. It sparked the growth of an idea: to communicate across cultures, languages and histories. It turns out that Sunflower Seeds was, after all, interactive. ❚

“The Unilever Series: Ai Weiwei” exhibited at the Tate Modern, London, from October 12, 2010, to May 2, 2011

Sarah Maloney is a Halifax-based artist.