DAY 22

True Value

I have a picture frame which incorporates three frames in it.
In those three frames are 3 postcards: in the first the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei is standing holding a valuable vase, in the second postcard, the vase is captured in mid fall and he appears to let the vase go; in the third image the vase lies broken in pieces at his feet. The images may seem familiar!

Ai Wei Wei seems to be playing with the idea of value. The vase we’re led to believe is very old and therefore very valuable and yet he is deliberately dropping it. Which is more valuable, he seems to be saying, the person handling it or the object? Intrinsically the ‘object’ can only be as valuable as the person who sees it, or holds it, thinks it is.

It makes me think, how often are people broken in the pursuit of an ‘object’ considered more valuable than a human being.

Other art works I was able to see at his exhibition in London a few years ago, included his use of expensive materials to recreate mundane objects of the modern world – so CCTV cameras were made out of marble – was this to more authentically reflect their real value to us?

Similarly, another room was decorated in what appeared to be expensive, lavish wallpaper patterned in gold and orange, but when you started to look closely at the pattern, the objects were CCTV cameras and handcuffs.

I’m reminded of a lovely hymn we sing ‘broken for me, broken for you, the body of Jesus, broken for you.’ Isn’t a baby in a nappy, a remarkable image for God? In the same way isn’t Jesus the most wonderful valuation of us.