bricworks3 the watercube post-olympics ai weiwei - ARCHILEPSY ...

Each Porcelain Sunflower Seed is
hand painted by Chinese artisans
The Tate modern exhibit, Sunflower Seeds, is one of the
more extraordinary works to come to fruition under the
watchful eye of Ai Weiwei. Consisting of one hundred million
porcelain ‘seeds’, there sheer scale of the work makes it difficult
to believe that each sunflower seed is part of a porcelain mold
and that each has been formed and individually hand painted
in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Overall, the project took
two and a half years, employing over 1600 people.
It is not difficult to perceive this project as a critique on
western consumerism. There is an undeniable connection
between the mass production of goods in China and the
consumerist economies of the West. On a daily basis, we
purchase items made in China with no understanding of the
history behind them, the towns they were manufactured in,
the conditions in which the laborers work in, their wages, etc.
What is interesting about this exhibit is its paradoxical
relationship between production and consumption. Typically
mass consumerism is met through mass production methods.
This exhibit, on the other hand, supplied mass consumers
with individually produced seeds. At this scale it is quite an
extraordinary feat.
rad artist spotlight
> Let's not get too comfortable
there ol' chap...
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