Ai Weiwei - The Unilever Series - Sun flower seeds

Ai Weiwei (53), born 28th August 1957.  When Ai was 1 year old he and his family were sent to sent to a labor in Xinjiang and returned to Beijing in 1975.  Ai is married to an artist Lu Qing.  Ai enrolled with the Beijing Film Academy in 1978 with the likes of Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou and became one of the founders of "Stars", a cutting edge art group, this disbanded in 1983.

Ai's time in New York, United States of America was a conceptual time for his art career, he started by altering ready made object, also studying at the Parsons School of Design.

(Insert pic of Parsons SoD)


In 1993 Ai, returned to China, his father had fallen ill.  While here in Beijing Ai established the experimental artists in the Beijing East Village and also published the following three books: Black Cover Book (1994), White Cover Book (1995), and Grey Cover Book (1997).


Ai went closer to architecture and was the founder of FAKE Design (2003).  Back in 2000 he co-curated "FUCK OFF". Ai and HHF Architects designed a private residence in New York to house a huge China art collection, this was nominated for the Best New Private House by Wallpaper Magazine.


Ai's work has been and is exhibited across Europe, Asia and USA.


Ai has been ranked 13th out of the top 100 most powerful contemporary artists in 2010.








The Unilever Series, Sun flower seeds.


While on one of my many excursions to the extravagant Tate Modern, we came across a staggering amount of Sun Flower Seeds.  However these are not just normal seeds, the seeds have been moulded, firing in a kiln, then delicately had 4 black stripes painted on as a finishing touch.

When the exhibition first came to the Tate Modern the public were aloud to interact with the seeds, sadly this did not last that long to do the amount of dust that was caused, so they corned off the seeds and you can only view from a few feet away, both from the ground level and the first floor gangway.

What is to be taken into consideration is the time and effort it took all the people involved to construct and decorate the seeds.  Just the number alone is astronomical, by looking at the display of seeds whether it be at ground or first floor you do not actually understand the numbers that are there, what you need to do is to take the volume into account, how thick is the layer of seeds multiplied by the length and the width...then you will realise the substantial quantity.


The seeds are crafted by ancient Chinese methods from porcelain and then stripes of black paint.