Description of the two sculptures

The sculptures are around 60 cm in height, cast in copper and painted with orange stripes. They are relatively strong and weatherproof, but not enough to be suitable for exhibition in an outdoor area. Rather they are well suited for exhibition in some inside public space, like a foyer or similar.

- They both consist of a fragment of the 8-meters tall sculpture The Pillar of Shame, which is set up at University of Hong Kong, as a memorial of the victims of 4^th June ‘89 in Beijing.

- The face is fragmented and partly dissolved, but you could also interpret it the opposite way, so that it is fragmented, but in the process of being restructured into the full picture.

The orange stripes painted on the sculptures symbolize the violation of the human rights. The double option for interpretation concerning the face is intentional and symbolizes the open question: Is China heading towards a more democratic society, with a bigger public influence, lesser corruption and an improvement of the human rights of the public, and thereby fulfilling the demands of the students from June 4^th ’89, or is the going the opposite way, where both the claims of the students and the memory of June 4^th are disappearing?

I created the sculptures in 2008 in connection to an exhibition in Austria, where they also were used to symbolize the Tiananmen massacre, and the lack of respect for human rights in China.