Museum of Contemporary Craft
Ai Weiwei: Dropping the Urn (Ceramic Works 5000 B.C.E. - 2010 C.E.)
Portland, OR
July 15-October 30, 2010

Before defacing the first in a series of Neolithic vessels on video at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon, Beijing-based artist and activist Ai Weiwei pauses to look into the camera, as if to ask the viewer to bear witness. He then dips the pot into a bucket of pink industrial paint, obscuring its ancient design. It could be said that by altering ancient Chinese artifacts Ai is making a statement, but most often his work comes off more as a question for the spectator-very much in the spirit of Marcel Duchamp, whom Ai counts as an influence. His question might be "Does this action matter?" Or even "What are you going to do about it?" The Chinese government has frequently taken his activism as a challenge and regularly performs conspicuous surveillance on him. Ai, one by one, pulls the earthenware pots from a shelf and submerges them, changing them to blue or yellow, purple or green, with remarkable nonchalance.

The exhibition's title, "Dropping the Urn," comes from a triptych of photographs titled Dropping a Han-Dynasty Urn, in which Ai is shown in the first shot holding an urn, in the second shot with the falling vessel, and in the third with it shattering onto a brick floor. Though his expression changes little, Ai looks like a child taunting an inattentive parent with his hands fanning out from his body in a "So what?" fashion as an impish tuft of hair kicks out from his scalp.

Coca-Cola Vase features the brand's iconic red script painted onto a Neolithic vase in Warhol style. With the vase as canvas, the viewer must weigh the significance of ready-made and mass production against traditionally crafted objects. Industrialization in China presently competes with farmland as the population expands, and other pieces in the exhibit - including Watermelons, which are the size and color of real watermelons and made of glazed porcelain, and Untitled, a conical heap of to-scale replicas of sunflower seeds weighing exactly one ton, also made of porcelain - ask viewers not only to consider the connotations of the forms, but also the value of food in China.

Ai's most recognizable work to date is the National Olympic Stadium-or Bird's Nest-in Beijing, for which he was a consultant to the architects, Herzog & de Meuron. Viewers marveled at the shiny stadium's gargantuan crisscrossing beams during the 2008 Olympics, but Ai stepped back from the project when it was used as Chinese propaganda. Sometime thereafter, he ground down Neolithic pots, put the remnants in glass jars, and called the project "Dust to Dust." It is now also on display at the Museum of Contemporary Craft.

Elizabeth Lopeman is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Portland, OR, and teaches writing at Portland State University.

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