making sense {Ai Wei Wei}

making sense : Ai Weiwei

lego, untitled, 2014

As a modular building system, lego is a good metaphor for the speed and repetitiveness of much recent construction in China.

Like other objects in these fields, it is produced on an industrial scale, though machine made as opposed to hand crafted. Ai started working with this material in 2014, to produce portraits of political prisoners. When lego briefly stopped selling to him as a result, his response on social media led to overwhelming donations of bricks from the public.

Ai often uses lego to construct images because it is an objective kit of parts that removes the trace of the artists hand and does not reply on his skill or taste.