Ai Weiwei : The Box

27 Apr-30 Jun 2012

Overview

Pippy Houldsworth Gallery is delighted to present a miniature installation by renowned Chinese conceptual artist, film-maker and activist, Ai Weiwei, in The Box, the gallery’s micro project space, from 27 April to 26 May 2012. Following the scale of his Sunflower Seeds project at Tate Modern, it was Weiwei’s fascination with the micro as well as the macro that led to his interest in The Box, and his presentation of a ‘living’ sculpture at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London. Weiwei presents a cactus whose pot is built to house his hand-made ‘River Crab’ protagonist made in his workshop in Jingdezhen. River Crab, in Chinese, is a homonym for harmony as well as a popular euphemism for censorship in China. A resilient metaphor and a quiet yet potent protest, Weiwei’s darkly comic ‘arrangement’ is set behind glass inside a white cube of only 40 by 40 by 40 centimetres, floating inside a contained black space.