This week's cultural explorations...

Making Sense, Ai Wei Wei, The Design Museum

So what's the message, I hear you say?

Well the blurb says...'The show presented Ai Wei Wei’s work as 'a commentary on design and what it reveals about our changing values, the loss of cultural sensibilities in a world of limitless production and consumerism'(2) ....you had me at 'commentary on design' I said.

...'Materials culture'?

....'Tensions between past and present, hand and machine, precious and worthless construction and destruction'?

....yes please, show me how you translate this through your work oh mighty Ai Wei Wei....

clockwise, from top left: SPROUTS, 2015/ STILL LIFE, 1993-2000/ UNTITLED 2015/LIFE VEST SNAKE, 2019

Visual highlights for me were the 'Evidence' fields (which you can see in the first photo) these took up most of the exhibition space and were pretty impactful. SPOUTS was my favourite and the most visually pleasing.

Masses of rejected teapot spouts from the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279CE) resembled both squirming fish and human bones at the same time. They had an unexpected fragile beauty about them, especially when I spotted the fragment with decoration on it (look closely and you will spot in the first image) Obviously the textile designer in me was drawn to the meticulous arrangement of STILL LIFE; the glorious repetition, punctuated with natural variation both in the objects themselves and the arrangement which flowed from larger to smaller tool heads and of course with LIFE VEST SNAKE the repurposing of these found objects into new symbolic pieces (that old trick gets me every time!)

The automatic thought was to mass production and the waste it produces but then the realisation came that these teapots were handmade and pre-date the machine led industrial revolution, it is hand made mass production which is fairly unique to China......pause for thought there to consider the scale of operation which could produce these pieces by hand and then discard so many of them for not being perfect. I see what you mean about tensions between precious and worthless, Ai.

The rucksacks have a darker story, as they represent the victims of refugee crisis in Europe and the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The snake symbolises the unpredictable nature of the crises. (2)

Lego Lilies!

(not its' actual name) interesting he chose Monet's famous artwork to reference, it seemed an odd choice so I needed to find out why.... I assumed it maybe something to do with the fact that the original Water lilies by Monet was a constructed landscape ('designed' by Monet) rather than real life representation. (you can thank my stint as an Art Tutor, for that gem of info) His relationship with lego is well known (and if not read this ) but why Monet....for this I did a bit of extra 'Googling' and am shamelessly using the words of Artnews and quoting the design museum here as they sum it up so well,

Water Lilies (1914-26) portrays a lily pond in the garden of Monet’s home in Giverny, near Paris. While the image is famous for its depiction of beauty in nature, Hajek pointed out that the scene is a construct: the pond and Monet’s gardens were designed and created by the artist through the partial diversion of a nearby river.

Water Lilies #1 also includes a dark area on the right-hand side. The Design Museum said it represents the underground dugout in Xinjiang province where Ai and his father, Ai Qing, lived in forced exile in the 1960s. “Their hellish desert home punctures the watery paradise,” the museum said in a statement.

'Ai’s choice of pixel-like Lego bricks, industrial parts and colours instead of Monet’s brushstrokes, “suggest contemporary digital technologies which are central to modern life, and in reference to how art is often disseminated in the contemporary world.”

“There’s so many layers of meaning in this work,” assistant curator Rachel Hajek told ARTnews.

so... now you know ( to steal a phrase from Mr. Clif Tan aka the Feng Shui Dude at Dear Modern)

Ai Weiwei's Water Lilies #1 made out of 650,000 Lego bricks

PHOTO © ELA BIALKOWSKA/OKNO STUDIO

Someone said of Ai Wei Wei's work, that he is 'exposing political acts through art' and that definitely translates in the exhibition.

I saw the following words, (which I assume are his ?) written on a badge in the museum shop and I loved the sentiment;

'Evidence is Beautiful'

The curators also summed up AI's relationship with design when they said,

'to Ai, the significance of design often lies in its' potential to give form to our memories and experiences' (2) which especially resonates with me as this is very much how I think of design.

SEX TOY, jade 2014

Oh. not sure that's appropriate, Ai......which one of your themes does this relate to? past and present? hand and machine? precious and worthless? .....oh I see, are you trying to provoke a reaction? ...well it worked (screws up face and makes an ouch sound)

---

References:

1. Ai Weiwei Uses 650,000 Lego Bricks for Recreation of Monet’s Monumental ‘Water Lilies’ BY KAREN K. HO, March 21, 2023 2:44pm

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/ai-weiwei-lego-bricks-recreation-calude-monet-water-lilies-design-museum-1234661708/

2. Design Museum guide text by Justin McGuirk and Rachel Hajek

#art #materialculture