Ai Wei Wei at Tate Modern

As I was in London just before Christmas a visit to Ai Wei Wei’s Unilever Series exhibition at Tate Modern was essential. It’s a strange installation – millions of small porcelain sun flower seeds, each apparently identical, but actually unique spread across the floor of the basement of the former Bankside Power Station. Yet they are weirdly compelling and you find yourself wanting to reach in and touch them (which apparently you could when it was first installed). Personally the fact that each seed is handmade did make me ponder the whole race to the bottom and craft destruction of the Made in China years, which apparently was partly the point. Here’s the blurb:

Each seed has been individually sculpted and painted by specialists working in small-scale workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Far from being industrially produced, they are the effort of hundreds of skilled hands. Poured into the interior of the Turbine Hall’s vast industrial space, the 100 million seeds form a seemingly infinite landscape.

Porcelain is almost synonymous with China and, to make this work, Ai Weiwei has manipulated traditional methods of crafting what has historically been one of China’s most prized exports. Sunflower Seeds invites us to look more closely at the ‘Made in China’ phenomenon and the geo-politics of cultural and economic exchange today.

And some better photos here – it’s installed at Tate Modern till May 2011