Ai Weiwei 艾未未

Seemingly identical but actually individually sculpted and handpainted, these porcelain sunflower seeds are symbols of the common people. Ai Weiwei, an artist known for his acts of rebellion and resistance, paid hundreds of small-workshop artisans in the city of Jingdezhen, China, to produce thousands of ceramic seeds. For centuries, factories in Jingdezhen have been an important industrial center for porcelain production, serving the imperial family and supplying foreign markets. Opposing notions of mass production and industrialization, the sunflower seeds represent the individual creativity and collective strength of the people.

–Wai Yee Chiong, curator of Asian art

Ai Weiwei paid skilled craftspeople in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen, where porcelain was invented 1,200 years ago, to sculpt and paint each of these life-size sunflower seeds by hand. The seeds relate to Ai’s memories of growing up in communist China under Mao Zedong, when Chairman Mao was represented as the sun and the Chinese people as his loyal sunflower followers. Although widespread consumption of sunflower seeds in China was associated with limited personal choice, people ate them with pleasure (and continue to today). Contained in a modern household jar, the porcelain seeds become a symbol of both the common and the extraordinary. Larger artworks by Ai feature enormous quantities of porcelain seeds, including 100,000,000 created for an installation last year at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. Outspokenly critical of the current Chinese government’s policies, Ai was arrested in April 2011 and his studio was raided by Chinese authorities. He was released after three months following an international outcry.