Message from jmcmanus

[Anonymous]

WeiWei tells the story of how he has one cat who has figured out how to open the studio door and go outside. He mentions that the cat never closes the door, but leaves it open for other cats to leave. I believe this is a metaphor for his own intentions, to open the door for the Chinese people.

This film also features his major installation of sunflower seeds made of porcelain. In addition to creating his artwork, WeiWei keeps artisan villages alive in their arts by making huge commissions for the elements of his artworks. WeiWei uses the sunflower seed as a metaphor for tweets. If each tweet is a seed, then what is the potential for each seed- for it to grow into a new flower full of seeds! There are many ways his work will appeal to young students, and they can learn the potential of simple and poetic materials.

Ai WeiWei is a world class artist. Whether you look at him a formal, conceptual artist, or as a political dissident, the man makes striking images and he is willing to get intensely involved in the issues that empassion him. WeiWei hires his own team of researchers to find the true number of dead or missing people after the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province. WeiWei uses the metaphor of the student's backpack as a unit in a pattern where is writes out a message in backpacks in a large scale installation wrapping a building in Germany. In a later installation, he builds a monument of backpacks with a sound installation of the lost student's names being read. From wikipedia"[font=sans-serif]Details of school casualties had been under non-governmental investigation since December 2008 by volunteers including artist and architect [/font]Ai Weiwei[font=sans-serif], who had been constantly posting updates on his blog since March 2009.[/font][78][font=sans-serif] The official tally of students killed in the earthquake was not released until May 7, 2009, almost a year after the earthquake. According to the state-run Xinhua news agency, the earthquake killed 5,335 students and left another 546 children disabled.[/font][79][font=sans-serif] " [/font]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Sichuan_earthquake