Ai Wei Wei is a Chinese artist, activist, dissident and designer of the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing. I may not be a fan of all his works, but damn, I admire his guts. The latest news is that he has just been released from house arrest, which prevented him from attending his own River Crab party in Shanghai, held to ‘celebrate’ the impending demolition of his studio there. During his confinement, he wrote an open letter to British Prime Minister David Cameron: ‘We see the tendency in the world to criticize democracy and sometimes even to say that authoritarian countries like China are more efficient. That is very short-sighted. China looks efficient only because it can sacrifice most people’s rights. This is not something the west should be happy about.’

While in London recently, I visited his massive installation Sunflower Seeds at the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. A few people asked me to be their ‘kuaci mule’, that is, steal a couple of porcelain sunflower seeds and bring them home. I was totally ready to be an art thief. Imagine my disappointment when I got there to find the installation closed off for ‘essential maintenance’. The crowd looked on while an employee raked the seeds like a monk in a giant zen garden.

Here’s the video I took:

It turns out that having people step on the seeds releases harmful dust. Now visitors can only walk around the installation.

Not being able to touch changes the experience of the work completely. But it doesn’t fail to convey a powerful message. As I stood there staring at this sea of seeds, each one hand-made and hand-painted, I thought of the mountain of futile human labour that was laid at my feet – so neat, so perfectly presented as art for my consumption! I couldn’t touch or move the mountain, because doing so is dangerous… or so they say.

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Sharon Chin is co-founder and managing editor of Arteri.