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KRISTINA KLEUTGHEN

editors review

Ai Weiwei, Sunfower Seeds (2010)Unilever Installaon, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, 12 October 2010 2 May 2011.

From above, Sunfower Seeds appears as a atly textured mass of grey, slightly bluer than

the hard, at walls of the Tate Moderns Turbine Hall. Up close, the undierenated mass of grey

sharpens into an innite expanse of sunower seeds: 1500 metric tons of porcelain covering 1000

square meters of oors space to a depth of ten cenmeters, amounng originally to more than 100

million ceramic seeds. Each seed was molded, individually hand-painted, red, and polished in a

classical porcelain-making process of some thirty individual steps carried out by 1600 workers of allages in the ancient Porcelain City of Jingdezhen. Sunfower Seeds represents a scale of producon

and presentaon that Ai has been increasingly experimenng with over recent years, such as with

Fairytale (2007) at Dokumenta and So Sorry (2009) in Munich. But the scale of Sunfower Seeds

trumps anything he has produced before.

A een-minute lm on the seeds producon reveals that, from start to nish, human hands

power the enre process. The seeds painters are primarily women: when asked how may seeds

he himself painted, Ai responded, Three or four and lamented the quality of his own painng.

The concepon and design are Ais; but the labor belongs to the nameless arsts and arsans of

Jingdezhen who actually produced the millions of objects. Jingdezhen has a porcelain producon

history that spans well over a millennium, and its products were oen desned for the imperial court.

This contrast between porcelain as a ne art t for emperors, and the humble form of the ubiquitous

sunower seed spat, crushed and empty, onto every street in China is sharpened by the recent

record-seng sale at Sothebys Hong

Kong of an eighteenth-century imperial

porcelain vase for $32.4million. Ai

frequently engages both the praccaland conceptual idea of cultural relics

(wenwu ) in his work, from

dissecng classical furniture to smashing

or repainng ancient poery. Do the

sunower seeds therefore subvert the

idea of the cultural relic? Or do they

expand it into the present of Chinese

contemporary art, and the future that

will soon enough become (Chinese) art

history?

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The choice of Ai Weiwei marks the rst me that a Chinese arst or even an Asian arst

has been given the Unilever commission for the Turbine Hall.1 Does Ai connue to be beloved by the

West more for his polical leanings, for his art, or for the fact that these two things are inseparable?

As polical and policized an arst as Ai has become with regard to contemporary causes like the

2008 Sichuan earthquake and polical dissidence, the sunower seeds hearken back to Ais youth

during the Cultural Revoluon (1966-1976). At the me, popular imagery depicted Mao Zedong as

the sun and the masses as sunowers angling their heads perpetually toward him. Ai remembers

that sunower seedssupported the whole revoluon as an object available for generous sharing

even among the poorest people, a gesture of connecon and compassion during even the bleakest

mes. It is surprising to realize that Mao did not make more use of this quodian edible available to

even the humblest of his cizens. But it is also a senmental noon that lacks the usual bite of Ais

social jusce acvism, and romancizes a harsh period in Chinas recent history that Westerners nd

parcularly fascinang.

A more interesng metaphor inherent in the seeds lies in the sheer scale of the installaon,

which recalls both Chinas booming populaon and the global power of its myriad nezens a

power seemingly made stronger by working en masse rather than individually. This connecon to

the present day and the power of the mass public conveyed through technology and the internet is

emphasized in a special interacve feature accompanying Sunfower Seeds. Eight camera and video

monitors allow visitors to record themselves asking a queson that is later posted on a dedicatedwebsite, aiweiwei.tate.org.uk, for Ai to answer. The camera-shy can interact with the arst and the

installaon through Ais near-constant Twier feed and by marking any such tweets with a special

hashtag (#tateaww). Ais near-obsession with Twier is well known, exemplied by the tweets sent

from his hospital bed aer undergoing cranial surgery for a brain hemorrhage. Ais fascinaon with

the publics ability to inuence world happenings over the internet, which is metaphorized by the

seeds, is also mirrored in the audiences rare direct (if digital) contact with the arst through this

special feature that is as much a part of the installaon as the seeds themselves.

The installaon succeeds through its interacvity, which Ai Weiwei intended to be with boththe art and the arst. But the formal sensory experience of the seeds is no longer possible: only

a few days aer Sunfower Seeds opened, health concerns raised by the clouds of ceramic dust

generated by visitors romping through the thousand square meters of the installaon led the Tate

Modern to close o the seeds from public access. Visitors can now only view Sunfower Seeds from a

distance, although seeds have been set out for visitors to touch in a weak imitaon of the intended

experience. Some have noted how this connecon to the respiratory problems suered by ceramics

workers and others in heavy industry expanded the metaphors inherent in the installaon. 2 But

the seeds were also suering under the physical presence of the public, whose weight and fricon

rubbed the black slip o the unglazed porcelain, and whose desire to possess the seeds soon found

samples for sale on both eBay and its Chinese counterpart Taobao . Environmental and public

http://aiweiwei.tate.org.uk/http://aiweiwei.tate.org.uk/

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safety concerns, damage to and the of works of art, and the dangerous power that the public can

wield as an enty Sunfower Seeds has perhaps become more of a metaphor than even Ai Weiwei

intended.

Notes

1 Anish Kapoor, whose Marsyas was installed in the Turbine Hall from 9 October 2002 to 6 April

2003, idenes as a Brish arst although he is Indian by birth.

2 Evan Osnos, Leer from China: Ai Weiweis Exhibit at the Tate O Limits, The New Yorkeronline, hp://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2010/10/ai-weiwei-tate-o-limits.

html, accessed 15 October 2010; Ulara Nakagawa, From Seeds to Dust, The Diplomat, hp://the-

diplomat.com/new-emissary/2010/10/18/from-seeds-to-dust/, accessed 18 October 2010.