The Chinese artist and political activist Ai Weiwei is known as much for his sniping at the Communist regime that rules China as much as for his innovative artwork. Ai Weiwei was the consultant artist on the spectacular bird’s nest arena built for the Olympic Games in Beijing, although he refused to visit the stadium in protest at the repressive nature of the government. His political art has included a performance piece in which he deliberately dropped centuries old Chinese vases as a further response to the way history was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution.
Given his controversial pedigree (last week he said was under house arrest in China), his installation Sunflower Seeds in the massive turbine hall at Tate Modern, his first major work in London, has raised as much publicity for the difficulties of showing the work as for the work itself.
At first glance, you are presented with what looks like a vast expanse of grey gravel, a bleak sea of tiny pebbles that are anything but alluring. A closer look reveals that the “sea” consists of thousands of handmade sunflower seeds each made out of porcelain and each painted individually with black lines convincingly emulating the appearance of the seed.
The facts of the installation are staggering. Consisting of 100 million seeds fashioned by 1,600 artisan potters over a period of two years, and with each one individually made, the work is both impressive for the labour involved – Ai Weiwei confessed to making only three seeds which he said were not very good – and for the work which is redolent with meaning as both “performance” art work and its comment on modern China.
The seeds were fashioned in Jingdezhen, the porcelain capital of the country with a history that stretches back thousands of years. It was here that fine Imperial porcelain was made for the exclusive use of the court, work that was at one time discredited by Chairman Mao for its exploitative of the work force. Today the city still produces porcelain but much of it is reproduction of older forms, in particular blue and white wares.
Sunflower seeds are a rich source of nourishment. In Britain, they are usually confined to health food shops devotees. However, in Chinese culture, many people nibble them throughout the day. The empty husks are spat out in restaurants and public places, covering the floor with crunchy bits of shell. They are even served in bowls as an adjunct to the meal.
I visited the installation when you could walk across the shingle, the tough “seeds” resisting the weight of the body, creating a noise similar to walking on a pebbly beach – but unlike the silky smooth surface of real sunflower seeds, these are hard and dry, and do not slide over each other. A further part of the interaction was picking up the seeds and examining them, noticing that, despite their seemingly identical appearance, each one is individual.
Alas, health and safety regulations have decreed that visitors walking over the seeds generate porcelain dust, which is dangerous if inhaled in quantity and so might affect the warders who supervise the work everyday. Now visitors may look but only touch round the edges, although they can still speculate on the significance of what the piece is about.
In part, Sunflower Seeds serves as a metaphor for the vast population of China, reminding us that, although each piece looks the same, each is individual and should be recognised as such by the government, while the number of seeds represents the number of people with access to the internet, which is severely limited. With its combination of the political and the visual, Sunflower Seeds is both provocative and thoughtful.
Sunflower Seeds continues until May 2 2011
