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UK - London - Sunflower Seeds art installation by Ai Weiwei at Tate Modern

Ai Weiwei, one of China’s leading conceptual artists, has undertaken the eleventh commission in The Unilever Series at Tate Modern in London. Sunflower Seeds is made up of millions of small works, each apparently identical, but actually unique. These life-sized sunflower seed husks are intricately hand-crafted in porcelain. Each seed has been individually sculpted and painted by specialists working in small workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Far from being industrially produced, they are the effort of hundreds of skilled hands. Poured into the interior of the Turbine Hall’s vast industrial space, the 100 million seeds form a seemingly infinite landscape. Sunflower Seeds is a sensory and immersive installation, on which visitors can touch, walk on and listen to as the seeds shift under our feet. Porcelain is almost synonymous with China and, to make this work, Ai Weiwei has manipulated traditional methods of crafting what has historically been one of China’s most prized exports. Sunflower Seeds invites us to look more closely at the ‘Made in China’ phenomenon and the geo-politics of cultural and economic exchange today.

Filename
20101012tate sunflower seedsC.jpg
Copyright
Mike Kemp
Image Size
4243x2828 / 1.5MB
Contained in galleries
2010
Ai Weiwei, one of China’s leading conceptual artists, has undertaken the eleventh commission in The Unilever Series at Tate Modern in London. Sunflower Seeds is made up of millions of small works, each apparently identical, but actually unique. These life-sized sunflower seed husks are intricately hand-crafted in porcelain. Each seed has been individually sculpted and painted by specialists working in small workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Far from being industrially produced, they are the effort of hundreds of skilled hands. Poured into the interior of the Turbine Hall’s vast industrial space, the 100 million seeds form a seemingly infinite landscape. Sunflower Seeds is a sensory and immersive installation, on which visitors can touch, walk on and listen to as the seeds shift under our feet. Porcelain is almost synonymous with China and, to make this work, Ai Weiwei has manipulated traditional methods of crafting what has historically been one of China’s most prized exports. Sunflower Seeds invites us to look more closely at the ‘Made in China’ phenomenon and the geo-politics of cultural and economic exchange today.
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