Dress with Flowers, 2006
Porcelain
2.75 x 35.5 x 25.5 inches
Ai has been employing porcelain in his works since the 1990’s, drawn to its unique role in Chinese history as a material used to make everything from mass-produce
household wares to handmade aesthetic objects. The artist has worked closely with the porcelain masters of Jingdezhen, the centuries-old porcelain capital of China,
to create exquisitely detailed works depicting such varied objects as sunflower seeds, oil spill puddles, and watermelons. In his Dress with Flowers series, these masters reproduced everyday children’s dresses purchased by Ai from a grocery store near their kilns, replicating them with all their patterns, pleats, and folds. The resulting porcelain dresses appear both beautifully delicate and hauntingly lifeless, testing the limits of this traditional material.