Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957), Illumination, 2019. Lego bricks on baseplates, mounted on 4 aluminum panels, 120 ¾ x 151 1/8”. University purchase with funds from the William T. Kemper Foundation, 2022. Photo by Alise O'Brien.
Workshop: Picture to Pixel Art
Pixel art is a type of digital art where images are created and manipulated at the pixel level. Each pixel serves as an important building block that makes up the image. Many artists take the unique visual style of pixel art and transform this digital technique into other media, including Legos, beads, and sticky notes.
Join us for a 90-minute art-making workshop inspired by Ai Weiwei’s Illumination and led by Keren Guo, BFA student in the College of Art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. In this 2019 work recently acquired by the Museum, Ai transforms an iconic selfie into a monumental Lego construction that visually suggests the pixels of digital photography. In doing so, he uses a playful and familiar commercial medium to call attention to political injustice. During this hands-on experience, participants will respond to Ai’s process by using fuse beads to create pixelated art based on digital images.
Free and open to the public. Recommended for ages 8 and up.
About the facilitator
Keren Guo is a second-year student at Washington University in St. Louis. She is earning a BFA in studio art with a second major in art history and archaeology. As an artist, her interdisciplinary practice across painting, sculpture, and digital media focuses on the self-expression of one’s identity and visualizing bizarre individuality. She also likes to create imagery, creatures, environments, and narratives to build other worlds.