Ai Wei Wei

Ai Wei Wei…the first topic of my History of ART and DESIGN…

Before doing the research on Ai Wei Wei…there is not much that I know about him…

And honestly, I not really understand about what my lecturer Professor. Ray had taught in the class…

And now at least I had known something about Ai Wei Wei…

Ai Wei Wei – a Chinese artist was born in 18 May 1957. He is active In architecture, photography, social and cultural criticism and film as well. His artwork has been exhibited in China, Japan, Korea, Australia, United Kingdom and many other countries. This has showed that his designs are famous among many countries.

One of his popular artworks is the Sunflower Seeds. Ai Wei Wei had commissioned a China factory to make 100 million porcelain representations of the common Chinese snack. Those ‘seeds’ were individually hand-painted by 1,600 Chinese artisans. After that,Ai Wei Wei spread them across the floor at Tate Modern, London. From his artwork, it showed that Ai Wei Wei is making something common into something very precious.

Besides, Ai Wei Wei had himself photographed dropping a Han dynasty urn onto the floor in 1995. 

 

He also had his exhibition of monumental outdoor sculpture – Template which made of wooden doors and windows from the destroyed Ming and Qing dynasty houses that collapsed after a storm.

Template

Other than that, Ai Wei Wei also exhibited another of his popular artwork, Grapes which was made by nine Qing dynasty stools. These stools were arranged in improbable angles. There are three- and four-legged stools sharing one leg with another except for the centre stool. This artwork looks organically grown rather than artificial. This artwork showed the different views towards the original stool from Qing dynasty. 

Grapes

With the common thing and turned it into precious, it was the design of Ai Wei Wei. As an architecture, artist or a designer, Ai Wei Wei is always doing activism.