Ai Weiwei at The Design Museum in London...
7:08 p.m."Those who are alive, live on fully-
don’t hope earth keeps a trace behind."
Ai Qing, 1980
07/12/23 - The above verses belong to one of the most prestigious poets of the 20th century in China and who was also the father of the artist Ai Weiwei, who is currently exhibiting at The Design Museum in London "Making Sense". There we find an artwork that became the talk of the town: it's Water Lilies #1, an appropriation of the well-known painting by Claude Monet that is exhibited at the MoMA in New York and at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. Ai Weiwei recreates Giverny's idealized water lily landscape, but using Lego bricks. It is a tribute not only to Monet but also to the father of the Chinese artist. In this version, a black portal opens (to the right) representing the door to the underground shelter in the Xinjiang province, where he lived with his father Ai Qing in forced exile in the 1960s ("The aquatic paradise pierced by a memory infernal").
Now if we refer to the material, specifically, could we think that Ai Weiwei punctuates our current association with the industrial, instead of with nature? It is very likely so.
Water Lilies #1, by Ai Weiwei (2022)
Lego bricks
If we consider the montage, it is very difficult to appreciate this artwork, which is the "star" of the exhibition, when it's trapped in a wall with other installations in front of it. As in Monet's water lilies, distance is essential to understand the set of plants, flowers, water and sky.
The rest of the exhibition showcases installations that Ai Weiwei has been producing since the 1990s, such as Remains and Spouts, which consist of thousands of pieces of porcelain that have been discarded from production due to defects.
Spouts, by Ai Weiwei (2015)
Porcelain
Untitled (Porcelain Balls), by Ai Weiwei (2022)
Porcelain
The image above corresponds to thousands of perfectly aligned small porcelain spheres. These objects of abstract beauty and delicate material were, according to the sign, weapons of war in the past (perhaps bullets). It is hard to believe that these 200,000 tiny structures, so perfect in their sphericity, were made by hand.
With the same obsession with order, where nothing is out of line, Ai Weiwei and his team present Still Life. Here each stone is a tool used, precisely, during the Stone Age: knives, axes without the handle, chisels and everything that could be useful for an individual to survive in those times. There are 4,000 pieces, lined up side by side, and they although they are rare objects, worthy of archaeological study, it is said that Ai Weiwei bought them at a street market.
Still Life, by Ai Weiwei (1993-2000)
Stone
We end the tour with the well-known vase with the famous label. It is one of his most controversial pieces as it is an urn from the Han dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE) bearing a logo. Ai Weiwei makes two different systems collide, both valuable (depending on the culture we are talking about) but opposite: one that embodies ancient craftsmanship and the other that represents a brand that produces massively, a global symbol of consumerism.
Han Dynasty Urn With Coca-Cola Logo, by Ai Weiwei (2014)
As we leave, we can't help but wonder that we came for the legos of Monet's painting but we are carry the painted urn in our heads (which we have seen countless times), while we reflect on how a soda took over the world almost without wanting it...
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