Ai Weiwei at the SAM

Art should be a nail in the eye, a spike in the flesh, gravel in the Shoe

Today I visited the Seattle Art Museum to see an Ai Weiwei exhibition. I didn’t know much about Ai’s work — only today I gained some familiarity. Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, a prominent poet, was exiled for 19 years during the Cultural Revolution, forcing the family to live under harsh conditions in the Gobi desert. Their exile began in 1958. Ai was just a year old. This experience profoundly shaped Ai’s worldview.

His work is a bold reminder of the importance of questioning, of pushing boundaries, and of fearlessly expressing one’s truth. Each piece stood as a testament to his rebellious spirit — a call to examine the world around us and challenge the norms we often accept without question.

Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo, and to seek new potential. Simply put…creativity is the power to act.

Ai mixes time (past and present), utility (uselessness and usefulness), materials (common and uncommon) to provoke our imagination into unfamiliar perspectives. Some works exemplifying these concept blending techniques — a Han jar overpainted with a Coca-Cola logo, tea bricks painted with automotive paint, common everyday objects made with marble, an apparently useless table with three legs , porcelain sunflower seeds. These amalgamations force you to confront how we perceive time, heritage, memory, utility and materials to give meaning to things. He urges us to rethink the value we place on objects and the narratives we attach to them.

The porcelain seeds evoke memories from his childhood, when his father was humiliated by the Revolutionary Army soldiers who ate sunflower seeds and tossed the shells. The sunflowers are symbolic of the masses involuntarily following authority.

He also pushes for greater accountability for those in power through his exhibit with salvaged rebar from the 2008 Sichuan earthquake rubble and the school backpacks transformed into a long snake running along the ceiling. Once symbols of learning and innocence. Now a haunting remembrance.

Ai questions our concept of borders and fences, compelling us to reflect on the immigration crisis. One particularly evocative piece was a metal door with bullet holes from near the border of Syria and Turkey.

I also learned about his filmography. Human Flow, directed by Ai documents the journeys of over 65 million displaced people fleeing famine, climate change, and war. This is followed by The Rest and Rohingya, both addressing similar themes of refugee displacement. His other films include Cockroach, which deals with the 2019 Hong Kong protests and Coronation, which is about the 2020 Wuhan lockdown.

Leaving the exhibit, I carried with me a renewed commitment to question, to seek understanding, and to express without fear. If you have the chance to experience his work, prepare to see the world a little differently.

Let us question, act and be fearless in expressing ourselves!

-G