He sits on an elevated bamboo platform, almost 20 feet off the ground, plastering himself onto a mass of concrete bodies. There are fifty of them, flaming up into the sky, some with their mouths wide open, others reclining, or in embrace. They seem to be climbing atop each other as if spilling out of, or into, a fire. Their faces are a blend of agony and hope, ignited by a lost dream that seeps out of the yearning in their dried-out elongated fingers.
These bodies were repaired over the weekend under the eyes of Jens Galschiot, 59, who sculpted them in 1997.[break]
Photos Courtesy: Dikshya Karki
The artwork, known as the “Pillar of Shame,” is an eight-meter sculpture commemorating the eighth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square student protests of 1989.
Although it currently stands in the Haking Wong podium of Hong Kong University, the sculpture was previously housed at Victoria Park. It has been on display at the University premises since 1998 after a resolution was passed to allow it to stay.
“It’s good in a way. Although the audience for the sculpture changes, it’s about those students who gave their lives for something, and students now surround it,” he says.
The sculpture is also about the old and the new generations and a corrupt system that denies any wrongdoing. Its base is carved in English and Chinese with the words, “The old cannot kill the young forever.”
The words are as powerful as the contorted bodies that do not hide their pain. Although on display outside Mainland China, in Hong Kong, one of China’s Special Administrative Regions, the message is clear. The sculpture openly questions the atrocities of the Chinese authorities against the student movement in 1989. It stands against the denial of the massacre of hundreds of students asking to rewrite Chinese history.
“I want Hong Kong to be proud of its choice to display the sculpture. It’s impossible to speak about June 4 in Mainland China. You’re certain to be jailed,” Galschiot says. Hong Kong has been kind to the artwork. Each year, supporters hold events around the monument, remembering the fateful government crackdown.
But it has not always been easy for the Danish artist. He was denied entry to Hong Kong twice in 2008 and 2009 under dubious grounds. This was the same period when the Beijing Olympics were being held and he had begun The Color Orange Project.
“In a corrupt system that denies you any rights, you protest subtly. You use a color,” he explains. During the Beijing Olympics, players and participants were requested to use something in orange to give out a message that everything was not well, that human rights violations continue in China.
The color is now synonymous to Galschiot’s art. The “Pillar of Shame” was painted in orange in 2008 without his supervision after he was refused visa to Hong Kong.
But his belief in the power of the color has only grown stronger. He was always dressed in orange over a course of four days as he checked, plastered, washed and painted the monument. The color endures like his sculpture of winding essence.
“There’s both hope and horror in my work. There are bodies in agony and ones being embraced,” he says. He believes that his sculpted bodies are embedded with the power to connect to other bodies outside of them.
“Art lies between poetry. You can make statements without words and yet the message pours into the audience through the heart, head and body,” he reflects.
But his work is not abstruse; it’s a monument in the tradition of art activism. With its title, engraving and color, it has become an emblem for the fight for human rights in China.
“The act of repairing it symbolizes a renewal of commitment to the cause it represents,” mentions David J.Clarke, Professor of Art History at Hong Kong University.
Since the sculpture is made of concrete, it requires regular repairing. “I work primarily with bronze. But casting it requires HK$2.5 million, and I can’t afford it. But I hope someday I can cast it in bronze and erect it in the Tiananmen Square itself,” Jens Galschiot shares.
The writer holds a Master´s degree in Arts & Aesthetics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
dikshyakarki@gmail.com
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