in the late 2000s the Chinese artist I wewei was commissioned to produce one of the largest and most significant art installations ever revealed at the tape modern in London the artwork consisted of 100 million individually sculpted porcelain sunflower seeds every single one carefully crafted and produced by a team of, 1600 workers in the small town of Jing Dean the poring capital of China and historically well known for its production of imperial porcelain dating back over a thousand years for me this work of art is the ultimate celebration of human craftsmanship and artistic process something I deeply love exploring And discussing in my videos collectively the seeds are an undefinable sea of gray with no one seed being any more special than the other yet at the same time each seed is special and a completely unique artistic work in itself embedded with the intimate hand painted Touch of many individual artists and Crafts People and despite the seeds being simple in form and appearance there are countless layers of meaning and interpretation just as there are layers of seeds covering the 10 cm deep thousand square met floor during its tape modern installation in 2010 and whilst the interpretation of this work is a very important part of the story the process of manufacturing these seeds is often lost I himself has even talked about his deep love for process and believes that slowing down and assembling by hand is important in today's fast-paced world an idea that is very much present in many of his other works so in this video I want to take a brief look at why the seeds were created and and then talk about the 2 and 1/2 year period it took to create the seeds the processes the techniques and the incredible story of artistry and craftmanship that stands behind this poignant and thought-provoking work of [Music] art iwayway is both a celebrated and controversial figure in China he's quite well known for Designing beijing's bird nest Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games but he's also a very vocal critic of the Chinese government his family was exiled during Ma's regime giving I a hard and oppressive upbringing in Zing Jang a poor District in China growing up in poverty I talks about how sunflower seeds were one of the few luxuries available and a Common Street snack that was carried around and shared with friends he recalls the sharing of sunflower seeds as a gesture of human compassion providing a space for pleasure friendship and kindness during a time of extreme poverty repression and uncertainty one of the core person relationships I has with sunflower seeds having lived in very harsh conditions with very little education he ended up gravitating towards art and eventually started to discuss individualism and freedom of expression within his artwork which was of course the polar opposite to the views of the Chinese government at the time and still is very much today I's personal life and challenging relationship with China of course plays an important role in the development of sunflower seeds I has said that it's a responsibility to voice his views and distaste towards those in positions of power and sunflower seeds is ultimately an expression of that however there are many other much broader and certainly less personal interpretations and intentions associated with the installation almost too many ideas in fact too many for this video but to provide a little bit of context the central idea around the seeds is the connection to the cultural revolution in China being born in 1957 I was young but certainly able to remember this period lasting from 1966 to 1976 with images and propaganda posters of mous dong who was depicted alongside sunflowers symbolizing the leader as the sun and the undefinable masses of people as sunflowers turning towards him even this idea alone can be talked about and interpreted in many different ways there's so much more to say on just this one perspective and there are many more ideas relating to individuality and collectivism the commonality of the sunflower seeds in modern China the deeper history of seeds in agriculture during Ma's regime and more contemporary ideas of mass consumerism and Factory workers all of which can be linked and discussed in the context of this [Applause] artwork the location of manufacturing and all the local people that were employed are really at the heart of this work's significance just as the seeds have the potential to grow tall and strong the sunflower seeds project was just as much of a charity project as an art piece as a somewhat impoverished area of China many of the the locals were more than happy to produce the seeds and were paid more than the standard living wage the seeds were quite tedious but easy to create with many people in the community even taking some of the materials home with them so that they could manage their homes look after the kids and cook whilst working on painting the seeds and all of this was very intentional by I he wanted to support and help the local community so bringing them months and years of work provided quite a significant boost to the local economy another important reason that I manufactured the seats in China was to critique and break down the negatively charged made in China stamp something that we're all very familiar with and unfortunately has become a label often associated with images of mass-produced inexpensive Goods handcrafting the seed in the small town of Jing desin with local artists and experts in porcelain was a very intentional and direct challenge to the robotic machine produced products we associate with the made in China label Jing Dean was chosen specifically because the kils in the Town Center became the main production Center for large scale porcelain export to Europe all the way back to the 15th century with improvements in water transportation and other developments with infrastructure production of porcelain started to concentrate ining Deon because of the local deposits of kyanite one of the main materials used to make porcelain so the town has a lot of historical and cultural significance in the world of porcelain and this is why I chose this particular location to manufacture the seeds [Music] despite its simple appearance the process for creating sunflower seeds involved around 30 stages and was completed by 1,600 people from the local area many of whom had years of specialization in certain aspects of the process of making porcelain just creating the liquid mud material was an extremely lengthy process involving the mining of three to four different materials and refining those into powders using very slow traditional waterp powered machines called trip hammers then hundreds of custom design molds had to be created for the liquid which were filled and compressed in order to create the millions of bare white porcelain seeds these were then left out to dry and then had to be hand sanded to remove what's called The Flash or the excess material left on the seeds from the mold stage then of course the seeds are carefully and precisely cooked in the oven using the traditional kils and practices that have been part of the porcelain making process for hundreds of years the seeds were then painted with four five Strokes to create the characteristic black and white stripes of real sunflower seeds unfortunately after the seeds were installed in the tape modern in London small traces of lead were found to be present in the black paint and it was such a concern that the installation was actually fenced off a few days after opening visitors were initially allowed to walk onto the sunflower seeds pick them up and touch them but this would actually grind the seeds together and unfortunately cause a small amount of dust to be released into the room going back to the process after the seeds had been painted they were once again cooked in the large K ovens and then they were washed rinsed cleaned and finally weighed and packaged for transport the whole process required many steps and many layers of expertise over a long period of time it's such a monument to traditional craftsmanship and Artistry and something that I personally find so much joy in discussing and observing the scale of the operation the immense amount of hours spent on producing the seeds are for me what provides so much significance to this piece when I look at it I get a bit emotional because I don't see simple painted sunflower seeds I see thousands of hours of focused physical and mental work people's lives people's daily routines and work is something that we all do we all spend hundreds and thousands of hours at our workplaces and so to see so much work manifested in physical form in one place must have been quite an amazing experience to see in person thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed consider dropping a like it really goes a long way if you want to check out my own artwork I'm a professional illustrator by trade I'm trying to hit a th followers on Instagram before the end of the year so if you want to help me out and support me there I'd greatly appreciate it and subscribe if you want to see more of these behind the scenes type videos looking at the processes the techniques the studios of artists and designers of all kinds but until then thanks for watching [Music]