The seeds, installed by Chinese conceptual artist Ai Weiwei, come as the 11th commission in the Tate Modern’s Unilever series, which fills the museum’s central Turbine Hall with big, unusual and often interactive art. Weiwei’s seeds – all 100 million of them – are not actual sunflower seeds but porcelain replicas, hand-crafted and individually painted over the course of two years by some 1600 Chinese artisans.
The Guardian sheds some light on how all those seeds were created:
“Historically, the town’s [Jingdezhen's]only activity has been making porcelainware for over 1000 years. The super-high-quality skill for generations has been making imperial porcelainware,” Ai said. “In modern days, however, it has become very commercialised.”
Harnessing traditional craft skills, each seed was moulded, fired and painted with three or four individual brush strokes, often by women taking the objects home to work on them. 1600 people were involved in the process. “Even taxi drivers were talking about it,” he said.
“I tried to explain to [the artisans]what we wanted them for, but they found it very difficult to understand,” said Ai.
The installation opens today and runs through to May 2011. [Designboom and The Guardian]
Bobbobboy
Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 2:32 PM“1600 Chinese artisans” “taking the objects home to work on them”
Sounds like an Art sweat shop to me. I would like to know what these people were getting paid for this.
Chris
Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 9:44 PMPerhaps that’s one of the things that this installation is trying to say?
1600 (presumably) lowly paid workers who have no concept of what their work will be used for; the work ends up being walked over by the wealthy few for pleasure only to be disposed of after a few precious weeks.
Why sunflower seeds? Not sure.
Chris
Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 9:51 PMThe Tate Modern is one of my all-time favourite places to visit. When I was in Europe at Christmas I took my then-4 year old daughter to see the installation in the turbine hall.
At the time it was a piece by a Polish artist consisting of a large metal box that patrons walked onto. So little light came into the box that you were completely unaware of people and surfaces around you.
My daughter can still recount the feelings that the piece aroused in her: fear of the unknown, excitement at being a part of a shared experience, relief at coming out again.
I should imagine that she would spend hours in amongst these seeds, thinking about the sheer quantity, feeling them between her toes, piling them over her legs like she does sand on the beach.