(logo chiming) (dramatic music) - Welcome to "The Newsfeed."

I'm Paris Jackson.

A recently opened art exhibit by a Chinese artist reimagines a French Impressionist, Claude Monet's, famous work landing here in Seattle for the first time.

Ai Weiwei's piece is a beautiful take on Monet's "Water Lilies."

Art and culture editor, Brangien Davis, takes a trip to the Seattle Asian Art Museum to get a close-up.

(light music) - Artist and activist Ai Weiwei is world-renowned for creating powerful, yet playful works that call attention to injustice.

Seattle Art Museum is currently hosting a show of his work, the largest ever in the US, which includes a special installation of his "Water Lilies" at Seattle Asian Art Museum.

I was first surprised by how vivid the colors are, and then second, how tiny the LEGOs are.

How many LEGOs are we looking at here?

- 650,000.

- That's quite a few.

- And I haven't counted (Brangien laughing) every single one.

- [Brangien] Why does Ai Weiwei choose to work in LEGO as a medium?

- They have a relevance to, say, certain subject matter, like Pointillist paintings or Impressionists.

But they also are kind of like smartphone snapshots.

They're almost digital in a way.

LEGOs also are incredibly vivid in their color scheme.

The wide color palette is very attractive, especially when you're creating images of old master paintings or, in this case, Claude Monet.

- [Brangien] It's not the first time Claude Monet's colors have graced the walls of this museum.

In 1956, Seattle Art Museum exhibited Monet's first "Water Lilies" painting in the atrium here.

But Ai Weiwei's version incorporates his personal history.

- As in many of his other LEGO projects, he often inserts a separate motif, a juxtaposition.

In this case, he's inserted an image that is very personally important to him.

It's a rather memorable image from his childhood.

It's the dark doorway that entered the place where he lived underground in Little Siberia, in far west China, where his father and their family was exiled.

This was this dark hole in the ground that you had to go inside.

There's no natural light.

It was intended as punishment for his father and the family to live like this in an impoverished state.

- At Seattle Art Museum's downtown location, the Ai Weiwei retrospective includes 130 provocative works spanning 40 years of sculpture, installations, ceramics, and photography.

Why do you think it's important to have this show here right now?

- Obviously, to have the art of somebody who's not only an artist but also an activist is key at this particular transition moment in our nation's history.

I think it's, you know, the museum's mission is to talk about the relationship between art and life, to think about our current situation and about how we actually have agency.

We are able to do something, no matter how small you think it is.

But as a collective, no doubt, we will have a great impact.

- To close out Women's History Month, I took a trip back to my high school, Bellarmine Prep, to speak at the inaugural Women of Impact Leadership Panel in Tacoma.

It was an engaging conversation that included a distinguished group of women leaders representing medicine, academia, and business, some of whom were also Bellarmine grads.

It was an open forum to the community, where we shared our unique journeys, challenges, and our insights on leadership.

I'm Paris Jackson.

Thank you for watching "The Newsfeed," your destination for nonprofit Northwest news.

Go to cascadepbs.org for more great local coverage.

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