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Flowers have multiple associations in Ai Weiwei’s lexicon. Just before the artist’s birth, China launched its Hundred Flowers Campaign, temporarily encouraging a "flowering" of free speech in order to flush out and punish dissent. The artist’s father, the celebrated poet Ai Qing, published "The Gardner’s Dream," an allegorical tale of freedom. As a result, the family sent into exile, toiling in labor camps for more than two decades.

The beautiful porcelain flowers in Blossom illustrate the wildly diverse profusions of flora that Ai Qing once envisioned—and the freedoms they represent for all of us.