Dust to Dust
My husband asked me what I thought of the destroyed Neolithic pots at Ai Weiwei’s exhibition. I was curious about my favourite interests, archaeology and art coming together. Thirty glass jars on a wooden shelf contain powdered Chinese Neolithic pottery that Ai Weiwei had broken and grounded to fine dust. It is suggestive of a memorial site. A series of cremations. Alluvial debris. Stardust. Granules that once had a form and function are now symbolic of a bygone era.
In adjacent rooms, Chinese artefacts are displayed as readymades. Neolithic vases are inscribed with the Coca-Cola logo in red and gold paint. Ai Weiwei drops a Han Dynasty Urn, captured in three black and white photographs in the mid-90s. My thoughts concerning his artworks were not about defacing antiquity or desecrating the past. Instead, I considered what values the collective ‘we’ assign to the past. Artefacts that ‘survived’ are considered valuable because they represent information of that period, even if mass-produced, and can help us understand the how and why of human behaviour. Art is considered valuable because of its communicative components that express human imagination.
Ai Weiwei’s artworks resemble a repository of collective memories that translates across space and time. Parts of history are reinvented and speak to the present moment. The exhibition encouraged me to think of my own days. How will I spend the rest of my limited time before I, too, return to dust? Recently, this was what I contemplated while I spent a significant amount of time with my family in Adelaide. My mum has cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy. It’s been scary for all of us, not least my mum. But we are hopeful. Amidst a pandemic, amidst a war, amidst climate change. We want to see better days ahead. With a heavy yet optimistic heart, I will soon leave my beloved Amsterdam behind and follow a trail of red desert sand, leading me to reactive particles in glass jars on another shelf.
Ai Weiwei: In Search of Humanity Exhibition, Vienna, March 2022.
