Design History: Ai Weiwei and Chinese Material Culture

Ai Weiwei: Making Sense is the first exhibition to present Ai’s work as a commentary on design and what it reveals about our changing values. This lecture will explore those ideas by firstly looking more closely at the objects themselves and consider what picture of civilisation they conjure.

During this course we will focus on one material as an example, porcelain. Ai’s field of 200,000 porcelain spouts attest to the rigorous aesthetic standards of the Song dynasty. China has a history of technology that exists in parallel with the dominant Western narrative, stemming from different origin myths and embodying a distinct ethical tradition. We will explore how porcelain was a mass-produced product from the earliest times and how at their time of manufacture, Chinese porcelain objects were functional commodities, and embodied empirical industrial design.

In the early 1990s, Beijing’s markets were brimming with historical artefacts, deemed to be of little worth. This was when Ai began his obsession and fascination with traditional craftsmanship. We will explore his relationship with collecting and examining the visual diary he kept during this time. This affords us a window into a formative period, one that left a lasting impact on his practice.

With Design Museum Academy online courses, you can learn with others by joining our live lectures and raising questions in the Q&A or through receiving a recording of the events available for a week after the lecture has finished. There will be time available at the end of the hour-long session to answer questions.

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