Ai Weiwei: Unilever Series - Sunflower seeds

I recently visited the Tate Modern on my trip back home, I wasn't really fussed about going as not much changes there from time to time, but it's free and its a nice way to spend part of the day, it's a nice place, a nice gallery. What I hadn't thought of seeing was Ai Weiwei's amazing Sunflower seeds! I had seen it on the news, but thought that it would not be there still, I'm glad it was.

You walk into the main space and you see a blanket covering the floor, a blanket of hand painted porcelain sunflower seed. It is a humbling experience and quite hard to fathom the actual number of them spread out on the floor or the amount of time it took 1,700 Chinese workers to create. The scale of it is amazing, I was sad that they stopped people from walking across them as Ai Weiwei had originally intended (health and safety reasons) but still it was an experience.

The work looks at mass production, of the Chinese economy which churns out hundred and thousands of goods. It makes you wonder if they are necessary, question the very nature of a society which can produce endless amounts of goods. This is mirrored in the way in which Ai Weiwei employed people to create the millions of seeds, all created with painstaking detail. It is definitely something to see and something which will stay with me for a very long time.

(I did take photos, but they aren't as good as the ones off the Tate website!)

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/unileverseries2010/