Cork is one of the materials that has been chosen by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei for creation of original works in Portugal. Supplied by Corticeira Amorim, the genuinely Portuguese raw material is showcased in Brainless Figure in Cork, a sculptural self-portrait by the activist. The work, produced from high density agglomerated cork, is part of the exhibition, Ai Weiwei - Rapture, that was inaugurated at the Cordoaria Nacional, in Lisbon, on June 2021.

Unlike a traditional sculpture, the preparatory work for Brainless Figure in Cork (91 x 81 x 148 cm) involved a CNC cutting machine to guarantee technical precision. A craftsman then sculpted several details that could only be fi ne-tuned using manual methods. As in the cork cycle, this artistic project is born from the combination of manual work, state-of- -the-art technologies and the grandeur of Nature. 

This is the second time that Ai Weiwei - one of the world’s most infl uential contemporary artists – is working with cork from Amorim. The fi rst occasion was in the context of the Serpentine Summer Pavilion in 2012, a project signed by himself and the Swiss architects, Herzog & de Meuron.

Photo: © Juliette Bayen