Showing posts with label 33. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 33. Show all posts

33


DONE
Thirty-third series: Free Ai Weiwei, ed. 20
When I was in London I went to the Tate Modern and saw he Unilever Series: 
Sunflower Seeds by Ai Weiwei. The conceptual and politically based artist had engaged Chinese craftspeople to create for him 100 million tiny porcelain sunflowers, each handmade, hand painted, no two identical. He filled the entire main floor with these little works of art. The whole art world had been chatting about the work, there were many reviews, and other piles of sunflower seeds were turning up at art fairs. I liked visually how the work filled the huge turbine hall in a gentle sand-like way and loved all the metaphors it set off crackling in my head. Anyway, soon after we got back the artist, boarding a plane to Hong Kong was arrested, disappeared, taken into custody – no one really knows because no one has heard from him. I have signed all the petitions for his release, I attended the sit-in over by the East River, and like the rest of the art world I am watching the news reports to see outcome. Worried. So this series is my reaction to the whole mess. The work consists of a 3 ½ x 2 inch poly bag, color xeroxes of the work in turbine hall printed on fine papers, red string, and a scattering of (real) sunflower seeds. On the back are a couple of QR codes (Quick Response specific matrix barcodes) that hop right to The New York Times articles discussing the issue - this one from April 6, this one from April 11, and this one from April 20.This work will be placed from April 24 through April 30 in New York.