http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/sep/24/ai-weiwei-alcatraz-lego-extraordinary
From the Ai Weiwei art show at Alcatraz:
The scale of the Lego carpets, and the painstaking labor from dozens of assistants required to execute it, recall his masterpiece Sunflower Seeds, an overwhelming collection of hand-painted porcelain ovals installed in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. (As with the cordoned-off Sunflower Seeds, Ai had to place limits on this work too; he wanted visitors to walk across the Legos, but Alcatraz’s administrators said no chance.)
But the franker hero worship of Trace – verging on agitprop, really – is light-years away from Sunflower Seeds’ sensitive metaphoric evocation of 1.3 billion Chinese. It’s as if, in the years since his detention, Ai has given up on metaphor. He sees art less as a means of self-expression and more as a global lingua franca. Contemporary art, in his view, requires and perhaps even creates an audience committed to liberty. Presenting his art in a prison amplifies that goal twice over.
Trace, the show’s most ambitious work, consists of six large carpets of Lego blocks that depict more than 175 prisoners of conscience, past and present Photograph: Mae Ryan