Ai Wei Wei

My daughter and I have been intrigued to see grafitti and signs dotted around Hong Kong referring to the artist Ai Wei Wei who was recently released from his three month detention in Beijing.   We are not sure what they mean.

His prominence in the news has somewhat overshadowed his artistic works.   Recently, the Asia Society
in New York launched an exhibition of photographs that he took while living in the city between 1983 and 1993.  The 227, selected from around 10000 photos, capture the artist as part of the expatriate Chinese community, his life as an artist on the fringes of East Village and his daily life.

This exhibition is in contrast to his work recently exhibited at the Tate Modern.  This work, entitled ‘Sunflower Seeds‘ appears to be natural seeds emptied into the Turbine Hall, at first glance.  In fact, each of these millions of  seeds were handcrafted in porcelain by a factory in China and are all different.   The individuality of these seeds leads us to question our own role in the world, our insignificance of being one person and the significance of being part of a whole made up of billions of individuals.