Ai Weiwei | Sunflower Seeds: One Hundred Million Hand-Painted Porcelain Seeds

The floor of a huge exhibition hall is covered with one hundred million porcelain sunflower seeds, about ten centimeters thick, looking like a uniform gray gravel ground from afar. Only upon closer inspection does one realize that each seed is solid porcelain, hand-shaped, fired, and individually hand-painted with black patterns by artisans in Jingdezhen—1,600 artisans worked for two and a half years—thus no two are exactly alike. The discrepancy between the appearance of mass production and the reality of individual handcrafting is the essence of the work. The exhibition hall is a vast space converted from an industrial factory, with uniform daylight streaming through skylights. Both high-angle overhead shots and close-up ground-level shots are effective. Avoid: using machine-produced uniform particles, changing material to plastic or stone, too small an area, adding fences to prohibit walking on it.

Translated from Chinese by AI.

一座巨大的展廳地面鋪滿一億顆瓷製的葵花籽,厚度約十公分,遠看像一片均勻的灰色碎石地。走近才發現每一顆都是實心的瓷,由景德鎮的工匠手工塑形、燒製並逐顆手繪黑色的紋路,一千六百位工匠做了兩年半——因此沒有兩顆完全相同。大量生產的表象與逐一手工的真相之間的落差,是作品的全部。展廳為工業廠房改建的巨大空間,天窗灑下均勻的日光。從高處俯視與地面近距離兩種尺度都成立。避免:使用機器量產的均一顆粒、材質改為塑膠或石頭、鋪設面積過小、加設圍欄禁止走上去。