The floor is entirely covered with a deep layer of what appear to be gray pebbles. It is like a bleak beach, and a toddler, getting into the spirit of it, has shed her shoes and is having a sit-down in her stockinged feet. Adults are not so comfortable: as if caught out by a freak snowstorm in the wrong shoes, several are picking a distinctly wobbly way over the crunchy, uneven surface, suddenly looking out of place in autumnal London clothes.
This is the latest installation in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in London — a series of wow-factor installations that have, over the past decade, included Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth, a deep fissure running through the concrete floor of the building, and Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project, which filled the space with mist and mirrors.
There is more to Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s (艾未未) installation than meets the eye, however. Bend and pick up one of the “pebbles” and you can see that it resembles a sunflower seed encased in its striped husk. In fact, each one — and there are 100 million of them, covering an area of 1,000m2 — is handmade from porcelain and has been individually painted by hand.
Photo: EPA
Ai — a bearded, impassive, black-clad figure, who snapped the photographers surrounding him at today’s press view almost as busily as they did him, and posted the results on Twitter — had the “seeds” made in the southern Chinese city of Jingdezhen.
“Historically, the town’s only activity has been making porcelain ware for over 1,000 years. The super-high-quality skill for generations has been making imperial porcelain ware,” he said. “In modern days, however, it has become very commercialized.”
Harnessing traditional craft skills, each seed was molded, fired, and painted with three or four individual brush strokes, often by women taking the objects home to work on them. A total of 1,600 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. “Everything they usually make is practical, and the painters are used to creating classically beautiful flowers using a high degree of skill.”
He said that the workers had been paid a living wage — in fact slightly more than customary — to work on the project. “Now they are asking when we can start again,” he said. “I shall have to think of a new project.”
Sunflower seeds, he said, had a particular significance in recent Chinese culture and history. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong
(毛澤東) was often likened to the sun and the people to sunflowers, gazing adoringly at his face. But sunflowers were also a humble but valued source of food in straitened times, a snack to be consumed with friends.
Ai also likened the artwork to Twitter — a vast sea of ideas and communication contributed by individual people. Ai now uses Twitter regularly after the blogs he kept were in turn censored by the Chinese authorities. One of his online projects has been to amass the names of those killed in the Sichuan earthquakes of 2008.
What if the temptation to put one of these lovingly made objects in your pocket becomes too great? Smiling, he said: “They might also want to eat one, and that would be a safety issue for the museum.” He added: “If I was in the audience I would definitely want to take a seed. But for the museum, it is a total work, and taking a seed would affect the work. Institutions have their own policies. But I know I would want to take a seed.”
A spokeswoman for the museum confirmed that they would be “encouraging people not to” depart with a souvenir. After the installation at Tate Modern is closed (it is on show until 2 May) the seeds, which weigh 136 tonnes, will be shipped back to Ai’s studio in Beijing, where he will think about using them for another project.
Did he make any of the 100 million sunflower seeds himself? “I made three or four,” he said. “But none of them was any good.”
The Portuguese never established a presence on Taiwan, but they must have traded with the indigenous people because later traders reported that the locals referred to parts of deer using Portuguese words. What goods might the Portuguese have offered their indigenous trade partners? Among them must have been slaves, for the Portuguese dealt slaves across Asia. Though we often speak of “Portuguese” ships, imagining them as picturesque vessels manned by pointy-bearded Iberians, in Asia Portuguese shipping between local destinations was crewed by Asian seamen, with a handful of white or Eurasian officers. “Even the great carracks of 1,000-2,000 tons which plied
It’s only half the size of its more famous counterpart in Taipei, but the Botanical Garden of the National Museum of Nature Science (NMNS, 國立自然科學博物館植物園) is surely one of urban Taiwan’s most inviting green spaces. Covering 4.5 hectares immediately northeast of the government-run museum in Taichung’s North District (北區), the garden features more than 700 plant species, many of which are labeled in Chinese but not in English. Since its establishment in 1999, the site’s managers have done their best to replicate a number of native ecosystems, dividing the site into eight areas. The name of the Coral Atoll Zone might
Nuclear power is getting a second look in Southeast Asia as countries prepare to meet surging energy demand as they vie for artificial intelligence-focused data centers. Several Southeast Asian nations are reviving mothballed nuclear plans and setting ambitious targets and nearly half of the region could, if they pursue those goals, have nuclear energy in the 2030s. Even countries without current plans have signaled their interest. Southeast Asia has never produced a single watt of nuclear energy, despite long-held atomic ambitions. But that may soon change as pressure mounts to reduce emissions that contribute to climate change, while meeting growing power needs. The
On Monday morning, in quick succession, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) released statements announcing “that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and General Secretary Xi Jinping (習近平) have invited KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to lead a delegation on a visit to the mainland” as the KMT’s press release worded it. The KMT’s press release added “Chairwoman Cheng expressed her gratitude for the invitation and has gladly accepted it.” Beijing’s official Xinhua news release described Song Tao (宋濤), head of the Taiwan Work Office of the CCP Central Committee, as
RSS