Ai Weiwei’s Colored Vases: Clever Artwork Or Vandalism? Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Jan 1 2006

Location: 

China

Exhibition visitors have expressed feelings of uneasiness or even pain and nostalgia when seeing Colored Vases by Ai Weiwei1. The 51 vases that make up the artwork are originally treasures from the Neolithic Age (5000–3000 BCE) and the artist has dunked them in common industrial paint.

Why did Ai Weiwei do it?

By doing this, he commented on the devastation caused by the Chinese Cultural Revolution2 and the disregard for centuries-old craftsmanship3. By covering the surfaces, the history of the vases is no longer visible but still there, beneath the dried layer of industrial color. Some viewers have felt provoked by this audacious act, in their eyes destroying something rare and precious instead of safeguarding and worshipping it.

Conclusion

Like many other works by Ai Weiwei, he uses irony to challenge viewers’ assumptions and perspectives. As China’s most notorious artist, he finds himself in constant confrontation with the Chinese authorities, and Colored Vases is an essential piece in his rebellious oeuvre.

Posted by Laraferreri on Feb 1 2023

Staff rating: 

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Effectiveness

How does this project help?

Activates (people)Energizes and organizes people into action. Can include emotion work
Amplifies (issue or campaign)Brings public and political attention to an issue or campaign.  Can include prefigurative action, making the invisible visible.
Does nothing (at all)Doesn't really have an impact, beyond possibly expressing the artist-activist's dissatisfaction with the world.
Shifts (culture)Shifts the cultural landscape in order to imagine and enable change.
Sustains (change)Support and celebrate change that has already been won and needs to be sustained.

Timeframe For change

This project seems to be part of a campaign with a clear long-term goal. Long-term goals tend to be things like: end racism; end homophobia; make the sun stand still in the sky. A campaign with a long-term goal also needs to have some kind of theory of change.