Sunflower Seeds Review PDF

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Sunflower Seeds Ai Weiwei 2010 Market Eye ● (Postmodern. Culture as dominant value. One world that is ever-changing and becoming ever more complex (and thus unknowable) within the ever-same (and thus knowable) global marketplace.) Formal Analysis

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Formal analysis (color, shape, texture, scale, line, shadow, space, composition and other physical properties of the work itself) Handcrafted artificial porcelain sunflower seeds Each seed unique to one another o Over 1600 workers helped produce these seeds o Each seed hand painted black to look realistic Entire floor of room filled with seeds raked flat In total, over 100 million seeds

Iconographic Analysis (story, theme or subject presented by the work including any symbolism or veiled meanings)  Weiwei made the artwork because the sunflower seeds evoke a warm personal memory, who recalls that while growing up, even the poorest in China would share sunflower seeds as snacks among friends  In the mid 1960s-1970s, he remembers that sharing sunflower seeds was a gesture of human compassion, providing a space for pleasure, friendship, and kindness during a time of extreme poverty and repression when individuals were stripped of personal freedom due to Chairman Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution  Revolution’s goal was to preserve ‘true’ Communist ideology by purging remnants of capitalist elements from Chinese society  Art poses questions. o What does it mean to be an individual in today’s society? o What does our increasing desires and materialism mean for the future?  Asks us to examine how our consumption of foreign-made goods affect the lives of others across the globe  For example, factory workers making iPhones in China earn about $1.85 an hour with a 60-hour work week schedule o In the U.S., that work schedule would be illegal Sociohistorical Analysis

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The artwork was created in 2010, 7 years ago. The market eye has the consumer as the center of the economy, with the economy succeeding only if the consumer invests. Significantly, the economy was struggling at the time, with the Recession “ending” and the US heading towards recovery. This occurred due to a lack of jobs at the time, with no jobs resulting in less purchases towards the economy. However, economic success has always been marked with a emphasis on outsourced labor, as evident by the amount of products made in China. This is mainly due to the cheap labor that allows much more consumers to contribute as a center of importance. o The art piece’s use of porcelain sunflowers seeds could reflect the changing market, a dependency on cheap labor, the suffering of others in order to finance the future. It was an accepted reality at the time, and still remains a central idea to this day. People will always suffer in production, for the consumer is the winner, and that is how the world works.

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Unique Interactive Awe-Inspiring Orderly Pleasant...