Last October the leading Chinese artist Ai Weiwei covered the floor with his Sunflower Seeds installation: one hundred million tiny porcelain objects, each hand-made by a master craftsman, no two identical. Sunflower Seeds is a carpet of life, multitudinous, inexplicable, and in the best Surrealist sense, strange. The seeds were intended to be walked on, but further strangeness followed. It was discovered that when trampled they gave off a fine dust that could damage the lungs. These symbolic representations of life could, it appeared, be dangerous to the living. The exhibit was cordoned off and visitors had to walk carefully around the perimeter.
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