Title: June 10th - 17:22
Medium: Super-8 film
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Resolution: 2880 x 2160
File Type: H.264 Codec / MP4.
Comments: It was our last day in Los Angeles before heading east. We had planned to meet with Yael at LACMA to see a new exhibition, Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age. Since we were all geeks for digital art we were eager to discover artists working in the digital realms. We very much enjoyed the show; All the mixed mediums and installations on view inspired new ideas. We took our time to walk through the galleries. Her husband, Joel, and their 2 kids joined us. After we saw all the artworks we went outside to see the public art piece that Yael curated for the museum. It was Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads. The Zodiac Project is Ai Weiwei's first major public sculpture. For this monumental new work, Ai has recreated the famous twelve bronze animal heads that once adorned the Zodiac Fountain in Yuan Ming Yuan, the Old Summer Palace, in Beijing. Cast around 1750, the original heads were looted by Anglo-French troops who took part in the destruction of Yuan Ming Yuan in 1860 during the Second Opium War. The heads remain a potent trigger for Chinese nationalist sentiments. Ai's new work suggests a dialogue about the fate of art objects that exist within dynamic and sometimes volatile cultural and political settings. With his subversive wit, the artist adapts objects from the Chinese material canon going back to antiquity, twisting traditional meanings toward new purposes. Ai's continuous exploration of the historical object finds great resonance with the encyclopedic collection of LACMA, which includes Chinese art from the Neolithic to the Qing Dynasty period. Yael shared with us the concept for the installation. I asked her to stand by her Zodiac animal. She chose the Ram. And so I went on to make a venerable portrait of her with the royal bronze steed.
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