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Viewpoints Sunflower Seeds | Sunflower Seeds |
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| Viewpoints | |
| Friday, 15 October 2010 | |
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The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s sculptural instillation at Tate Modern has become a focal point for discussion this week.
Sunflower Seeds is a vast, flat landscape of 100 million porcelain sunflowers covering the east end of the Turbine Hall. The sheer volume of sunflowers has a powerful visual impact on the audience, and the use of seeds cleverly plays on concepts that depicts, mocks and explores modern China.
Sunflowers were a typical propaganda metaphor for Chinese people during China’s Cultural Revolution because Chairman Mao is depicted as the sun and all people must turn toward him. But sunflower seeds are also one of the few foods that existed in abundance during that period, hence the sharing of it brings pleasant memory for many, including Ai. The fusion of these two symbolic meanings produces an artistic rebellion of political suppression and represents the fight for freedom of individual rights – there is no sun, and seeds are scattered in a random fashion. While each seed is different, no one seed outshines the rest.
The seemingly similar seeds also recall the idea of mass production, which has aided China’s economic growth. Ai’s porcelain seeds are produced in the city of Jingdezhen, famous for its production of Imperial porcelain. The project involved the collaboration of 1,600 workers, including many women and children. These workers – for lack of an international perspective – do not understand why a foreign country wishes to display porcelain sunflower seeds and will never see the product of their labour in its entirety. But they are happy, for that the project has brought employment and profits to the city. The process of Ai’s seed production revisits the reality of intensive labour production in China, but the collection of the seeds together provokes viewers to revisit what fundamentally supports the global consumer culture. The big “made in China” labels are replaced by seeds and porcelain - inherently Chinese art objects, raising a political question through art.
The work is clever for its layer of meanings and fusion of symbols – summarising the expansive Chinese culture into a simple instillation that has a strong impact on the visitors’ senses. But one cannot pause to wonder that the amount of attention the work received is largely due to the current international debate on China’s political controversies and not the instillation’s artistic value.
 China’s human rights issues are a theme one would expect from the installation. Following co-designing the Bird’s Nest for the 2008 Olympics, Ai publicised his anti-Olympics, anti-government views and refused to visit the stadium. He criticised those choreographing the Olympic opening ceremony, including Zhang Yimou, of failing to live up to their responsibility as artists.
But what are the responsibilities of artists? Ought they to share their creative imaginations with others through beautiful works of art, or, should they only produce works that deliver a morally correct message? Although art of every period is inherently influenced by the political context of that period, works that have nothing left when stripped bare of the political message will not stand the test of history to become art eternally admired. While they create commercial benefits in their contemporary societies, they lack the universal qualities to achieve resonance in a different time and place.
Ultimately the best works of art will come from artists who lay aside their personal angers and focus on the aesthetic aspects of their creations. The Chinese author Jung Chang’s Wild Swans (1991) demonstrated to readers across the world the brutality of the Cultural Revolution years, although the novel focused on her rites of passage, friendship and love. But her later and more ambitious work Mao: The Unknown Story (2005) had a much smaller audience. It did not achieve its intended effect of educating the world about China’s dark recent history because Chang’s hatred for a regime that has shattered her family has washed away her creative powers, making the final product a piece of empty rhetoric.
Artists’ responsibility is also bound by a work’s outcome and not its intention. Wu wenguang, one of the first Chinese independent filmmakers became famous by depicting China’s local corruption through the lives of suppressed villagers. He then realised that the only outcome his films have achieved is raising his own reputation. Once famous, he started distancing himself from the villagers believing they are of a social status lower than himself. Realising that the ambition for his own career advancement has tainted his artistic creativity and destroyed the innocent relationship between him and those he wishes to help, he stopped producing political films about corruption and instead focused his films on his own experiences and emotions. Does Wu’s choice not provide a good example of an artist’s responsibility?
Freedom of expression is a problem that restricts today’s China, in the sense that restrictions for people to express politically incorrect views through writing has prompted some to express such discontent through alternative forms of communication, such as art. The development of a more democratic government will be the beginning of a period whereby Chinese art will be judged internationally by its artistic value and not political message. But the Chinese government is definitely towards this. After all, the fact that Ai is allowed to create his politically sensitive porcelain seeds in China and exhibit them in Britain free of the Chinese government’s intervention shows the country’s increasing tolerance for freedom of expression.
Cecily Liu
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