Renowned Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei constructed the artwork using 650,000 Lego bricks, each in the smallest denomination possible: the single dot. Built on these tiny pixel pops of color — sometimes a single turquoise blip in a sea of red — the floral images come together only when you stand back from the artwork.
‘Water Lilies’ (at the Seattle Asian Art Museum through March 15, 2026) is about 50 feet long and eight feet tall. Hung in a narrow, cave-like room, the piece feels immersive, pulling your attention down its full length. And toward the right end you’ll find Ai Weiwei’s personal history embedded in the work.
A dark portal that suddenly appears in the lily pond is a reference to the years Ai Weiwei spent as a child in forced exile with his family, confined to an underground dugout (which he called “the black hole”) in Little Siberia. “This is a stark hole in the ground. There’s no natural light,” SAM curator Foong Ping explained when I visited. “It was intended as punishment for this father in the family to live like this, in an impoverished state.”
But during this bleak time Ai Weiwei’s poet father Ai Qing painted vivid verbal pictures of his earlier years in Paris, including his firsthand experience of the emotional impact of color in Impressionist works including Monet’s. These disparate memories coalesce in the striking piece.
Ai Weiwei is known for creating powerful and often playful works that call attention to injustice and question the line between real and fake. You can see many more examples — about 130 works — at SAM’s Downtown location in Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei (through Sept. 7), a retrospective that spans 40 years of politically provocative sculpture, installations, ceramics and photography.
“The museum’s mission is to talk about the relationship between art and life,” Foong said. “And this is exactly that … To think about our current situation and about how we have agency. We are able to do something, no matter how small you think it is.”
