Meditating with Ai Weiwei (born 1957)

The work is immense. More than fifteen meters long. You must therefore move away to contemplate it as a whole. Waves of color and light reflections then appear which pass through all the vibrant shades: blue of the water, green of the aquatic plants and orange of the foliage.

The reference is essential: the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei pays here an imposing tribute to Water lilies, by Claude Monet. At the end of his life, in his garden in Giverny (Eure), the French painter’s obsession with the light which circulates on the water and in the trees led him to repeat his gesture on nearly 300 paintings to capture it, to the point of exhaustion.

A century later, Ai Weiwei offers this evocation with today’s codes to add, as usual, a political gesture. His work is not done with paint. For the occasion, small colored bricks from a famous Danish brand have been requested, which usually delight DIY children.

Five years earlier, he had already used them to denounce political repression in China, by painting the portrait of 176 dissidents of the communist regime. To the point of inconveniencing the company producing these toy boxes.

To compose Water Liliesthe artist therefore appealed to the public to collect the 650,000 pieces of 22 different colors necessary. His monumental fresco thus becomes democratic, since everyone, with patience, can reproduce it.

Above all, it has a beautiful audacity that pays homage to the sense of beauty and resistance that survives, like flashes of light, in the hearts of humans.