Ai Wei Wei's

Ai Wei Wei was born at 18 May 1957. He is a Chinese artist and a political activist who is also active in architecture, curating, photography, film and social and cultural criticism. His father was a Chinese poet Ai Qing

Ai collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron as the artistic consultant on the Beijing National Stadium known as Bird's Nest for the 2008 Olympics. For my own opinion, Bird's Nest Stadium not only a architecture it is an art.

Bird's Nest

I have done some researched and studied on few of the Ai Wei Wei's famous art work. I would start with the Bicycles Installation.

Bicycles Installation

Bicycles was an essential mode of transportation that has become an icon of the post- revolutionary era. Made of heavy steel, these utilitarian bicycles were meant to last forever. In the hands of a master artist like Ai Wei Wei its all about meaning. Bicycles representing the power of the individual, joined together to make a structure that can rise above it all. Bicycles intersects all things, including politics, democracy, and social activism can be seen in the work and life of artist/ activist Ai Wei Wei. I can see that bicycles bodies are all joined together, wheels are free to spin independently. For my own opinion, this artwork is very impressive and can shown how the way of China citizen live at and suffering from the issue. 

Sunflower Seeds

Ai Wei Wei's with Sunflower seeds

A sea of seemingly identical sunflower seeds that located at Tate Modern's turbine hall, handcrafted by nearly 2000 workers over a period of 2 years, it's not just the scale of the piece that is impressive but its socio- political and historical scope that baffles. Each seed, each process and each hand that has gone to making these seeds has a meaning behind it and no detail has been left to chance. 

There are estimated 2 million number of seeds and its represents some suggest that it is a proportion of the population of Beijing. Others than that it also represent the percentage of the Chinese population that has access to the internet. 

Sunflower seeds themselves are symbolic of the famine and propaganda associated with Mao's reign. They are out of China's most valued export, porcelain, and were handcrafted in the Porcelain Capital, or known as Jingdezhen, a town that is famous with its production of Imperial ceramics. 

Each one was handcrafted by an artisan in one of the small-scale workshop, carefully selected by Weiwei, a method of production that he chose to purposefully contrast the mass production we typically associate with things “Made In China”.

Iron Wood

Continue with the Iron Wood of known as Tieli  wood, Qing Dynasty ( 1644-1911), that made out of tables, parts of beams and pillars from dismantled temples of the Qing Dynasty. I knew this artwork during lecture class of History Art and Design and wanted to know more about the meaning of this artwork. Through the researched that i have found, the relationships are symbolic and structural, referencing the destruction and reinvention that is a recurring theme in Chinese history. 

To be honest, when Dr. Ray explained this artwork during the lecture i was like what the heck is this. What is the main reason Ai Wei Wei's made this artwork? In my mind there is a lot of question. Yet, i done a research on this artwork, i would like to say that i could understand a little bit of this not much. I would like to do some further research to full fill my curiosity about this artwork. 

Although there are still a lot of famous and meaningful artwork of Ai Wei Wei that i haven research on. I still can conclude that Ai Wei Wei artwork are usually referred to political activism with excessive media.