COLLECTIVE WORK: Ai Weiwei Sunflower's Seeds

Ai Weiwei – Sunflower’s seeds 2010-11, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London.

Since six years ago, Ai Weiwei had been thinking in how to recreate the porcelain, traditional export from china, in a contemporary language. Then, he exposes one hundred million of hand painted porcelain "sunflower’s seeds". This work is clearly a reflection about the collective work.
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In the town of Jingdezhen around 1,600 Chinese people were involved in the production process: it demands at least 30 stages. Almost everybody there knows somebody in the town who was working in the sunflower’s project.
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Deep in the mines, people are digging the stone to take up the porcelain to the surface. They put the stones in a wheelbarrow, and pull it through the railway until reach the sunlight. Then they drop down the stones and demolish it with hammers (some of them work with the natural energy, ,by the force and movement of a water mill. It creates the dust of porcelain. When the dust is distilled in a mixer it is get liquid. Fortunately, all kind of clays gets vitrify in high temperatures and the porcelain fill the patterns of sunflower’s seeds. Hundreds of people inside the shop paint one by one the seeds. The most skillful people takes like three strokes per each side of the seed, the beginners, do it with fourth or five strokes. They weight the seeds in bags and carry them to the kiln. All the seeds are packet in boxes, and travel from Jingdezhen to London, where finally they are dropped and carefully distributed through the floor in the Turbine’s hall like a carpet.

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Ai Weiwei pay to all this persons for their work, and they used to say: we have not much more to do, can you give us more work? Ai Weiwei think: “do you feel that you need to make more, to make another project to meet they needs”. In 2007, he brought 1001 people from china to the Kassel (part of the Fairytale project for the Documenta 12). The participants were divided into five groups that each stayed in Kassel for eight days. In both projects, it is hard to determinate when the art work ends, and also it is impossible to say why the artist position is different from any social commitment.

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Although the Tate Modern has two requirements for the Turbine Hall commissions: the art work must be site related and be interactive. Sunflower seeds, was a sculpture that last open to the public interaction just 48 hours. In that time, every step was like a harvest sound, and the people created castles and rested over the seeds, include, some of them stole seeds. But their steps crash the porcelain and the dust could be dangerous for the long periods of breathing nearby, and then the exhibition was limited to be a contemplative traditional art object (it will stay until May 2th). But, like this, his image is still evident: The seeds are not open, they will never face any sun-leader. Mass population and mass production have the opposite side in the massive compulsive consume-consumption.

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The work of Ai Weiwei is completely contemporary, in the sense that we can not draw a line and say when the art finish. “I can be a failure here and there. But my intention is always to reach people who don’t need to know anything about art to care about their feelings, or to protect those basic values of self-expression and the right to life, dignity and opportunities”1. His art is not a matter of create an object of art, but a question of how to join the majority of people with every project. How many people have changed his life because of you?
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Luis Alberto Mejia Clavijo
Art Critic
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1- The Irish Times - Saturday, February 5, 2011. “They always say there is silence before the storm”.
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Note: Sotheby’s auction a sack with sunflower’s seeds, more or less £ 1 pound each. (120 000 seeds means an auction up to £ 120 000 = finally sold in £349,250).