ArtSEA: Seattle art museums give pixilated political perspectives

I felt similarly surprised by color when earlier this week I walked into a long cave-like gallery at Seattle Asian Art Museum and encountered the dazzling wall of hues that is Ai Weiwei’s Water Lilies (through March 15, 2026). If you feel like there’s way more Weiwei in the water this month, you’re right. As ArtSEA pinch hitter Jas Keimig wrote last week, SAM’s Ai, Rebel retrospective is the largest ever in the U.S., spanning three SAM locations.

The Seattle Asian Art Museum has just one of Ai’s works on view, but it’s massive and immersive and an absolute stunner.

A reinterpretation of Claude Monet’s iconic Water Lilies paintings — specifically the triptych on view at MOMA in New York City — the piece runs about 50 feet long and 8 feet tall. And unlike Monet’s softly brushed oil paints, Ai’s medium is 650,000 Lego pieces. (The gallery plaques call them “toy bricks” for what I assume are copyright reasons.)

Approaching the work you quickly realize the blocks he chose to achieve this feat are the tiniest Lego denomination possible: the single dot. Built on these tiny pixel pops of color — sometimes a single turquoise blip in a sea of red — the floral images come together only when you stand back from the work. But over and over, the fascinating technique draws you closer. The back-and-forth movement this inspires feels like dancing among the lily pads.

Also different from Monet’s work is the dark “portal” Ai added toward the right end of the piece. It’s a reference to the years he spent as a child in forced exile with his family, in an underground dugout (“the black hole”) in the Gurbantünggüt Desert.

During this time his poet father Ai Qing painted vivid verbal pictures of his earlier years in Paris, including his firsthand experience of the emotional impact of color in Impressionist works including Monet’s.

I felt a similar urge to step forward and back again when I visited the new show at the National Nordic Museum. Anne-Karin Furunes: Illuminating Nordic Archives (through June 8) showcases a captivating and meticulous series of paintings by the contemporary Norwegian artist.

At first glance, in the darkened galleries, the works look like low-res black-and-white photographs blown up to large scale and printed on sheets of perforated steel. But as curator Leslie Anderson had to convince me, these are canvases that Furunes painted and hand-perforated to resemble the “halftone” dots used to create images in old-school printed periodicals.

“I do each hole by hand, and I use different punch holes of different sizes — thirty different sizes,” Furunes explains on the museum’s website. “I sit with the canvas on the floor and I make each hole by hand, so this almost meditative process of doing the painting is a very slow process.” I should think so! 

Subtly lit from behind — as if sitting on a lightbox for close examination — these holes combine to create portraits of forgotten and mistreated people.

Furunes found these striking faces while researching archival materials, specifically photographs of Indigenous Sámi people who were subjected to governmental forced-sterilization programs in the early 1900s. In this way, she brings evidence of the region’s past eugenics policies out of the dark and into the light.

Also included in the expansive show are ghostly landscape paintings, in which Furunes painstakingly adds tiny cyan, magenta and yellow dots (the hues most commonly used in color printing) to her perforated canvases.

Many of the handcrafted works in this series recreate her own photographs of calving glaciers, eroding coastlines and clouds in remote Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago affected by climate change.

Seeing these works in close succession with Ai Weiwei’s Water Lilies is a master class in the power of the pixel, and how small dots — individuals — can amass to paint stories that mustn’t be forgotten. 

Feels like it’s time for a six-pack of picks. 

3 Music Picks

Kim Deal > The alt-rock darling who gained fame and fans as bassist for the Pixies and founder of the Breeders released her first solo effort Nobody Loves You More in 2024. People dig it — including Pitchfork, which said the album reveals “baroque-pop grandeur hidden in the heart of a slack-rock god.” (The Neptune Theatre, March 23)

Walt Disney’s Fantasia > The Seattle Symphony will play selections from 1940’s hugely influential animated film (along with excerpts from its less popular sequel, Fantasia 2000) as the accompanying scenes play overhead on the giant screen — including “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” with Mickey and those terrifying ambulatory brooms. (Benaroya Hall, March 21 - 23)

True Loves > Dearly beloved Seattle funk and soul band — featuring an all-star lineup of local musicians including Jimmy James on guitar and Skerik on bari sax — kicks off its Good Weed and Red Wine tour with two local nights showcasing their irresistibly groovy sound. (Jazz Alley, March 25 - 26) 

3 Film Picks

Young French Cinema is a très chic collection of six feature films by contemporary French auteurs. Anchoring the collection is 2024’s award-winning Dahomey, by French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop, a dramatization of the repatriation of 26 African artifacts to Benin. (SIFF Film Center, March 21 - 23)

In conjunction with its massive Ai, Rebel exhibit (which my colleague Jas Keimig wrote about for ArtSEA last week), Seattle Art Museum is presenting a film series inspired by Ai Weiwei. Included are documentaries about the artist and his activism, such as the award-winning Ai Weiwei, Never Sorry. (Seattle Art Museum, March 23 - May 25)

The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a lineup of 30 films. As always, the roster is a diverse mix, including: Carla the Rescuer, about a 101-year-old WWII resistance fighter now based in Spokane; Midas Man, about Beatles manager Brian Epstein; and a Fiddler on the Roof singalong. (Locations vary, March 22 - April 6)

And one more recommendation … from inside the house

In early April we’re launching a tasty new newsletter: The Nosh. Written by Rachel Belle, hometown host of both The Nosh television series and the Your Last Meal podcast, issues will feature a smorgasbord of things like regional food and restaurant news and recommendations, Q&As with local foodies and behind-the-scenes scoop from recent TV and podcast episodes. All delivered with Rachel’s signature sense of humor and personal storytelling. Sign up here!