Brick by Brick inspired by Ai WeiWei
A collaboration between the Design Museum and ITV's Peston to encourage everyone to celebrate key workers on the front line, and remember loved ones that we can't see during COVID19.
The Design Museum and Peston would like to task you to reinterpret one of Ai WeiWei's most famous pieces 'Trace', and create portraits of key workers or loved ones using lego (or anything else that you can find at home).
Step 1: Think of a key worker that is either close to you or someone you would like to thank in response to COVID19.
Step 2: Create a portrait of their face using Lego (or anything else you can find at home).
Step 3: Document the process or final product and share on Twitter using @designmuseum @itvpeston #peston #designfromhome
The Design Museum and ITV Peston will be taking submissions throughout the day, with the best pieces being featured LIVE on ITV's Peston tonight (Wednesday 15 April).
To be featured live on the show, please make sure to submit your entry via Twitter and to tag and use the following hashtags @designmuseum @itvpeston #peston #designfromhome
About the artist and the project
Ai Weiwei is an activist, film-maker, architect and artist whose materials range from old found furniture and Ming Dynasty vases to marble, porcelain, wood and steel.
He began to use LEGO in 2014 when he created a portrait series of 176 international political dissidents from more than 30 different countries for an exhibition staged in Alcatraz. As a victim of political imprisonment himself, the works were both personally and universally resonant as memorials of political oppression but also playfully subversive too, taking the building bricks of children (in this case inspired by his young son) and transforming them into pixilated images of numerous forgotten prisoners brought to public attention in collaboration with Amnesty International. The works toured to several museums across the US subsequently.
Since then his LEGO repertoire has expanded, and has been included in exhibitions across the world from Australia to Mexico and at the end of last year in London at the Lisson Gallery featuring work exploring the current refugee crisis.
Celebrate a key worker
Share your own compositions
Ai Weiwei, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, 2015
Background image: Ai Weiwei, Trace, 2014, Installation view on Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, 2014.