5 Unmissable Highlights from #MakingSense

This recreation of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies is Ai’s largest ever Lego work. He has subverted the image by adding in the door to the underground dugout in Xinjiang province where he and his father, Ai Qing, lived in exile in the 1960s.

When Ai first encountered these balls, he had no idea what they were. It turned out that they are cannonballs made during the Song dynasty (960 – 1279 CE). There are more than 200,000 on display, making it hard to comprehend that they were hand-made.

Our desire for convenience has given rise to hyper-disposable objects. A Styrofoam takeaway box is a throwaway item, but carved in marble Ai transforms it into a monument to the daily lived experience of millions of workers.

Ai has been giving the finger to sites of power around the world since 1995. For this exhibition, twelve photographs from the series have been turned into pigment prints, which Ai sees as the more graphic language of design.

In the 2000s, Chinese cities were being heavily redeveloped. Ai photographed the hundreds of empty spaces left behind. The images capture the constant state of change and criticise the way the government was seizing land for construction.