Sunflower Seeds

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Sunflower Seeds, 2010

Sunflower Seeds is a commission from Tate Modern to contemporary artist Ai Weiwei as part of the Unilever series. The room-filling installation consists of 100 million double-fired and hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds, which were piled 10 cm high over a total area of ​​3400 m². The ambitious Ai Weiweis project, on which around 1,600 people worked for over two years, was completed in 2010 and was on view from October 12, 2010 to May 2, 2011 in the Turbine Hall , the entrance hall and at the same time Tate's largest exhibition hall.

Manufacturing process

Ai Weiwei relocates the entire production of Sunflower Seeds to the so-called "Porcelain City " Jingdezhen , which has a long history and an excellent reputation in porcelain production. The traditional technique that is practiced here requires a lot of manual labor, which is why Ai Weiwei employed around 1,600 people, including 600 artisans, over a period of two years. With this approach, Ai Weiwei would like to become part of the history of Jingdezhen and bring people together.

In the course of production, Ai Weiwei was accused of profiting from production in China, similar to his Western colleagues, at the expense of his compatriots, whom he exploited as cheap labor. However, according to the culture magazine Du, all 1,600 Ai workers received local wages. Ai also made it possible for housewives to work flexibly from home.

Work description

Sunflower Seeds 2010, at the start of the exhibition at Tate Modern

When entering the hall, the visitor is faced with an enormous mass of porcelain sunflower seeds, which fill the entire floor of the turbine hall 10 cm high. From a distance, the impression of a uniform gray area prevails. When viewed up close, the attention to detail of the individual kernels is striking, as they look amazingly similar to real sunflower kernels. Ai Weiwei wants to irritate the visitors and get them to take the seeds in their hands or even in their mouths to check whether they are dealing with real sunflower seeds. To make this possible, Ai Weiwei deliberately chooses a form of exhibition in which visitors can interact with his art. Visitors can step on the carpet made of sunflower seeds and experience this installation physically.

However, shortly after the exhibition began, health concerns were raised, according to which inhaling the fine porcelain dust can lead to illness. As a result, entering the Sunflower Seeds is forbidden, but the visitor has the opportunity to view the installation from a closed path and from a bridge. As a result of this measure, the impression of the installation changes in such a way that the loud crunching of the cores gives way again to the museum-typical silence and the gray color surface is no longer broken by human movement and colors. The focus is no longer on the interaction with the work of art, but on viewing it, which can have an almost meditative effect on the visitor.

In later exhibitions, Ai Weiwei varied the way the Sunflower Seeds were presented. Sometimes it only covers separated areas of an exhibition hall or piles the cores. For an exhibition in the Marcel Duchamp Kunsthalle in Cully, the smallest art hall in the world, Ai Weiwei had smaller cores specially made in order to transport the monumental impression into this small room.

Interpretative approaches

The positive and lively impression that one could make of the Sunflower Seeds at the beginning of the exhibition is reflected in an association according to which sunflower seeds are not only a popular street snack in China, but also a symbol of compassion and friendship. In relation to the time of the Cultural Revolution, the Sunflower Seeds stand for the sunflower seeds that the people shared despite their poverty. A sign of compassion and friendship, gestures of humanity in an inhumane era . Ai Weiwei used the motif of the sunflower seeds at a very early stage in his creative period. Hanging Man from 1985 shows the profile of the artist Marcel Duchamp , which was bent from a metal coat hanger. In a photograph Ais, this “portrait” can be seen lying on a table while the inside is filled with sunflower seeds. Bearing in mind the admiringly friendly feelings that Ai has for Duchamp, a positive connotation for the sunflower seeds is certainly intended in this case too.

At the same time, the kernels are reminiscent of Mao Tse-tung's propaganda policy of that time, who often uses the imagery of sunflowers. This is particularly clear on propaganda posters depicting Mao as the shining sun, to which the Chinese people turn their heads in the form of sunflowers.

Parallels to other works of art

Xu Jiang: Living together

From a thematic point of view, Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds are very similar to Xu Jiang's sunflower varieties . With his installation Living Together , 2012, which consists of densely packed, oversized sunflowers made of aluminum, the Chinese artist explicitly refers to the time of the Cultural Revolution . However, the deformed-looking and dark-colored flowers of Xu Jiang radiate a much darker mood than Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds.

Antony Gormley: Asian Field

On a formal level, the reference to Antony Gormley's Asian Field is obvious simply because of the large number of porcelain cores . Gormley, who was a guest at the 2006 Sydney Biennale with Asian Field as well as Ai Weiwei, is presenting an installation in huge halls and public spaces in which 180,000 clay figures face the viewer. The dominant impression of a monochrome color surface coincides with the impression that is created when looking at Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds. Like Ai Weiwei, Antony Gormley also involves laypeople in the manufacturing process by having the figures made by 350 residents of the Chinese village of Xianshan within 5 days.

Michael Landy: Scrapheap Services

There are also parallels to Michael Landy's 1995 installation Scrapheap Services . The little paper men who fill the exhibition space and are about to be picked up and disposed of by a "junkyard service" in the form of life-size dolls, like Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds, raise the question of the individual in society.

literature

  • Ai Weiwei: According to What? Edited by Deborah E. Horowitz. Hong Kong, 2009, ISBN 978-4-4730-3594-3 .
  • Ai Weiwei: Barely something. Edited by Dirk Krämer, Klaus Maas, Roger M. Buergel, Duisburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-9810-5008-0 .
  • Ai Weiwei: Dropping the Urn, Ceramic Works, 5000 BCE-2010 CE
  • Ai Weiwei speaks. Interviews with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Munich, 2011, ISBN 978-3-446-23846-6 .
  • You. The culture magazine No. 817: Who is afraid of Ai Weiwei ?, 2011, ISBN 978-3-905931-09-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ You. Culture Magazine No. 817: Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei? P. 49.
  2. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PueYywpkJW8 , 0:20 - 0:46.
  3. ↑ Http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/kunst/ai-weiwei-jeder-kern-traegt-eine-botschaft-1607770.html .