Spouts, Ai Weiwei (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Design Museum)
EMPIRE LINES13 Apr 2023

Spouts, Ai Weiwei (2023) (EMPIRE LINES x Design Museum)

Design Museum curator Rachel Hajek makes sense of Ai Weiwei’s ‘fields’ of found objects, from ancient Chinese porcelain to Lego bricks, and how the contemporary artist’s fascination with the history of making is itself making history.

One of the world’s most well-known living artists and activists, Ai Weiwei works across disciplines, from film and sculpture, to collection, curation, and archealogical excavation. But Making Sense is his first exhibition to focus on design and architecture, and how traditional crafts and artefacts can help us re/consider what we value today. One of Weiwei’s ‘fields’ of found objects features over 200,000 hand-crafted porcelain spouts from Song dynasty China, their sheer quantity a testament to the scale of mass-production in Asia, many centuries before the Industrial Revolution.

Curator Rachel Hajek digs into Weiwei’s practice and politics, exploring tensions between the minor and the monumental, construction and destruction, and past and present. Plus, how the artist reimagines ‘Western masterpieces’ like Claude Monet’s Waterlilies with LEGO. to articulate his relationships with his father, a poet subjugated during the Cultural Revolution, and the Chinese state today.


Ai Weiwei: Making Sense runs at the Design Museum in London until 30 July 2023.

For more, read my article in gowithYamo: https://www.gowithyamo.com/blog/making-sense-ai-weiwei-at-the-design-museum



WITH: Rachel Hajek, Assistant Curator at the Design Museum, and a curator of Making Sense.

ART: ‘Spouts, Ai Weiwei (2023)’.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.


Follow EMPIRE LINES at: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936

Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(171)

A Cutting: Songs of the Water, Kaajal Modi (2024) (EMPIRE LINES Live at If Trees Could Talk 2026, Eden Project)

A Cutting: Songs of the Water, Kaajal Modi (2024) (EMPIRE LINES Live at If Trees Could Talk 2026, Eden Project)

Find out more about Kaajal Modi’s collaborative work with audio, oral storytelling, and cultural preservation, through ⁠⁠Arts of Noticing⁠⁠, an independent symposium in Leeds, as part of If Trees Coul...

16 Juli 3min

The Deployment of Art: The Imperial War Museum’s Artistic Records Committee, 1968-1982, Clare Carolin (2026) (EMPIRE LINES Live at King’s College London)

The Deployment of Art: The Imperial War Museum’s Artistic Records Committee, 1968-1982, Clare Carolin (2026) (EMPIRE LINES Live at King’s College London)

In this special episode, author and contemporary art historian Clare Carolin joins EMPIRE LINES live, to discuss the British government’s deployment of art as an instrument of war in the North of Irel...

2 Juli 52min

Elevation (Chiltan), Suleman Aqeel Khilji (2025-2026) (EMPIRE LINES x White Cube Paris)

Elevation (Chiltan), Suleman Aqeel Khilji (2025-2026) (EMPIRE LINES x White Cube Paris)

Contemporary artist Suleman Aqeel Khilji recollects the landscapes of Balochistan, a mountainous region spanning present-stay Pakistan and Iran, and the influence of Urdu language and literatures on h...

18 Juni 16min

The Venice Lagoon, a legal person, Giovanni Pellegrini (2025) (EMPIRE LINES x Ocean Space, Venice Biennale 2026)

The Venice Lagoon, a legal person, Giovanni Pellegrini (2025) (EMPIRE LINES x Ocean Space, Venice Biennale 2026)

Researcher, artist, and curator Pietro Consolandi traces the ‘wetland turn’ in art, ecology, and environmental justice, via Giovanni Pellegrini’s 2025 documentary film, The Venice Lagoon, a legal pers...

4 Juni 21min

Nobody Told Me Rivers Dream, Superflux (2025) (EMPIRE LINES x Klima Biennale Wien 2026)

Nobody Told Me Rivers Dream, Superflux (2025) (EMPIRE LINES x Klima Biennale Wien 2026)

Festival director Sithara Pathirana considers climate justice and public space in Europe, tracing the rights of the river Danube through Austria, Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, via the Kli...

7 Maj 17min

The Erasure of Palestine, Ahmad Al-Bazz (2026) (EMPIRE LINES x MuseumsEtc, Ibraaz)

The Erasure of Palestine, Ahmad Al-Bazz (2026) (EMPIRE LINES x MuseumsEtc, Ibraaz)

Journalist, photographer, and filmmaker Ahmad Al-Bazz captures the depopulation and destruction of Palestinian villages and towns, and the continuation of colonial histories into the present, through ...

23 Apr 24min

Human Being and Animals, Karel Appel (1949) (EMPIRE LINES x Galerie Max Hetzler)

Human Being and Animals, Karel Appel (1949) (EMPIRE LINES x Galerie Max Hetzler)

Curator Franz W. Kaiser considers the avant-garde paintings of Karel Appel, in relation to the historic CoBrA Movement and contemporary ecologies, via Human Being and Animals (1949).Karel Appel: Varia...

9 Apr 15min

The Thing About Making Rocks, Sovay Berriman (2026), with Marie-Anne McQuay (EMPIRE LINES Live at Flamm 2026, Liverpool Biennial 2025)

The Thing About Making Rocks, Sovay Berriman (2026), with Marie-Anne McQuay (EMPIRE LINES Live at Flamm 2026, Liverpool Biennial 2025)

In this special episode, artist Sovay Berriman and curator Marie-Anne McQuay join EMPIRE LINES live, to unearth histories of extractivism in Cornwall and Liverpool, and the relations between coloniali...

26 Mars 56min

Populärt inom Samhälle & Kultur

podme-dokumentar
en-mork-historia
gynning-berg
p3-dokumentar
svenska-fall
creepypodden-med-jack-werner
aftonbladet-daily
aftonbladet-krim
killradet
hor-har
kod-katastrof
mardromsgasten
badfluence
flashback-forever
rss-sanning-konsekvens
rss-kod-rod-2
vad-blir-det-for-mord
tv4-nyheterna-story
rss-mer-an-bara-morsa
rss-krimreportrarna