Wednesday 13 October 2010

I visited the Tate Modern yesterday to see
Ai Weiwei's "Sunflower Seeds" installation.
Since seeing it on the news a day or two before,
I had been intrigued and I knew it was something I
had to go and see.

Approaching it from a distance, it appeared rather unassuming,
with the scattering of people on it the only real reminder that it was
there at all. However as soon as I set foot on the surface, I was hit
by the sheer monumentality of just what had been achieved.
Then as I sat down and started to run my hands through the
porcelain sea, I felt calm.

While other turbine hall installations of the past have been
all encompassing and awe inspiring in their presence, and have
entertained through scale and interaction, this is the first that I have
witnessed that has made people stop, and think. Apart from a few
young children running around, everywhere I looked people seemed
to be deep in contemplation.

The thing that really touched me though, was when an older lady sitting
across from me compared this hand-made sea to the endless sea of stars
present in the sky at night, of which only a handful can be taken in at a time.