#tiananmen

[zegalba]

Lesbian Lovers Kissing In Tiananmen (2006)

[humanrightsupdates]

China: Address Tiananmen Massacre 36 Years On

Activists and Diaspora Keep Memory Alive, Press for Democratic Rule

(New York) – Thirty-six years after the killing of countless peaceful pro-democracy protesters in Beijing, the Chinese government still seeks to erase the memory of the June 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should cease censorship of the crackdown, allow commemorations, provide compensation to the victims’ families, and hold accountable officials responsible for abuses.

As in previous years, as the June 4 anniversary approaches, authorities across China are making a preemptive crackdown on commemorations, notably those by members of the Tiananmen Mothers, a group of relatives of Tiananmen Massacre victims.One prominent member, Zhang Xianling (张先玲), 87, told Radio Free Asia that even though she could barely “walk 200 meters without a wheelchair,” the authorities continue to subject her and others to strict surveillance and restrictions on her movement.

“The Chinese government has never owned up to the Tiananmen Massacre, much less provided redress for victims and their families,” said Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Beijing’s enforced amnesia has deepened authoritarian rule in China, yet it has not extinguished demands for the truth, democracy, and respect for human rights.”

The preemptive crackdown on Tiananmen Massacre commemorations is a stark reminder of China’s ongoing repression of dissent and its continued violations of the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

[shihlun]

Beijing, 1989.

[coffeenuts]

[chongqingexpressions]

香港已经退居二线了，现在要轮到台湾值班。不要忘记！

With Hong Kong out of the picture, it's now up to Taiwan to take up the torch.

[eucanthos]

Stuart Franklin (UK, 1956)

'The Tank Man', Tiananmen Square, 4 June 1989, Beijing, China

https://www.magnumphotos.com/shop/collections/fine-prints/the-tank-man-in-tiananmen-square-on-june-4th-beijing-china-1989-2/

[flowerfluid]

When I think about political art, I think about Guernica, Spain. I still remember studying Picasso's Guernica in school.

Our art teacher-- kind of a demon woman, but for this one unit and this one unit alone, I respected her-- showed us Guernica. We turned to the relevant pages in our hardcover art history books, and we studied the image ourselves, and we read. It's been too long already for me to remember if we took turns reading aloud, or simply followed along while she did; but I remember something about the screaming horse's tongue. I remember it was described as a dagger, or dagger-like. It struck me immediately, though I'm not entirely sure why.

I was supposed to be reading more, learning about the Spanish Civil War and how it was the true beginning of WWII, about how Guernica was seen as a cultural symbol for all of Basque and attacked for supposedly being a bastion of the resistance, about the role Hitler and Nazi Germany played in the Spanish Civil War and about how Picasso unveiled the painting directly in front of the people responsible. About how many times it has been censored and covered up and attempted to be buried, and about how it instead became the world's most famous piece of anti-war art.

(Did you know a tapestry of it exists in the UN headquarters? In 2003, it was covered up as to be invisible in the background of press conferences regarding the Iraq war. If it hadn't been, the screaming, contorted figures of Guernica would have been behind the faces of the men arguing in favour of war on Iraq.)

Instead, enraptured, I pored over this miniature version of a mural named for a town I had never heard of. The horse with its dagger tongue, the ceiling lamp surveying like an eye. Those are the parts I remember most clearly. I remember feeling stunned, and a little ashamed; I had, previously, in my teenage rebellion against the popular and the mainstream (and against my teacher), written Picasso off as a pretentious hack. While his art usually doesn't personally speak to me much, I regret holding this opinion, and it shattered the minute I saw Guernica. The more I looked at it, the more disturbed I became.

Then we were told to close the books and look up at the projector display. We did, and were greeted by the grainy, sepia footage of tanks rolling through Tiananmen Square.

We were silent. We were usually a very talkative class; in that moment, you could have heard a pin drop. We watched him calmly walk in front of the tank. We watched the tank approach until it could've touched him; we watched it slow to a stop. I think I remember hearing someone exhale.

I don't quite recall all my teacher said on it; aside from a general historical context, all I remember is that any discussion or expression of the massacre-- particularly artistic-- was strictly prohibited in China. Her decision to show it to us, immediately after we'd just processed Guernica, is something I genuinely respect to this day.

We studied a few Chinese artists-- all of whom were activists, many of whom were performance artists. We turned our attention between Guernica and Tiananmen, between Pablo Picasso and Ai Weiwei. The similarities were striking. They were haunting.

This unit struck the deepest chord with me. Poring over Picasso's Guernica and reading about his grief and desperation to finish the painting (it took 35 days); watching a man stand in front of a tank and reading about the artists who risked their lives express their pain; as nothing else in my life has, these things hammered into the importance of artistic expression. The rawest and most honest of art comes from sheer, desperate passion; and usually, activism. Art about your world pours itself out of you with unimaginable urgency, a burning feeling that cannot possibly be ignored. Stifling, or even just putting off the need to express and create feels like suffocating.

(It's indescribable. Though I've just tried, even what I've said doesn't fully encompass the wave of emotion that is needing so desperately to do something about what you're seeing and feeling and thinking you feel like you'll explode.)

So we studied Guernica, and we each chose a piece of it to replicate as a cardboard sculpture. Despite having it as an elective, I was not an overly skilled artist, and though the horse is what caught me, I chose something simpler; the detached, ghostly head, hair trailing behind it, a look of confusion and horror on its face. She (my sculpture, I decided, would be a woman) would hang suspended inside a cardboard box, at once emerging and trapped. I remember my classmate silently drawing, with surgical perfection, the warped tears of the wailing mother's face.

Much of Guernica is metaphorical. To analyse it piece by piece, section by section is one thing; but to understand it you only need look at it as one image, one agonising cacophony of grief and chaos. Mangled shapes and illogical bodies, warped faces and overlapping lines. Guernica is a piece you feel more than visually understand. It is not meant to be seen coherently. It is not meant to be intellectually dissected. You see it, the twisted limbs and frantic linework, and you understand. To look closely is to see the heartbreaking, individual suffering, devoid of metaphor; the gored horse, the broken sword, the dismembered soldier; the wailing mother, holding her murdered child, who to this day I feel like I can hear. To look altogether is to see an atrocity.

I researched more about Guernica and Tiananmen myself. About the artistic protests that swept through China in the wake of the massacre, and the persecutions that followed. About the experimental bombs and incalculable death toll, because too many bodies were blown apart. About the waves of students peacefully standing in front of tanks and being gunned down. About the Nazi official seeing Guernica and asking, Did you do this? , and Picasso's simple reply of No, you did.

To say I love Guernica isn't accurate. How can anyone love something so violent? But it was the first piece of art that truly and deeply disturbed me, and therefore truly and deeply resonated with me. It holds a place in my heart quite unlike anything else I've experienced. Every part of it made me want to look away, shove it in the back of my psyche, forget what I'd seen. To a degree, I did; it was only recently I was reminded of the piece, in seeing Guernica's indescribably powerful, public display in support of Gaza, Palestine (audio warning). It brought everything flooding back, including that I wanted, in retrospect, to hate that painting. I wanted to hate it for the sheer volume and severity of everything it made me feel. I could not possibly bring myself to.

Today, Guernica and Tiananmen Square are forever linked in my memory. Regardless of my teacher's intentions, I cannot help thinking of one without the other. It makes me think of censorship, of how similarly the two events were received in the art world; and now, in 2023, it calls notice to how similar both are to the ongoing attempted genocide of Palestine and horrific assault on Gaza. I was already a self-described anarchist punk, and staunchly anti-war, but Guernica and the Tiananmen footage still managed to radicalise me in a way not much else has.

On my main blog, in the tags of the video I linked earlier, I said this: "Guernica and its history gives me much hope for Gaza, odd as that may sound. Guernica survived and restored her heart; so too will Gaza."

My point, overall, is this; to every artist right now, who feels like they aren't doing "enough": keep creating. Fuel that burning fire in your chest, and keep your chin up. Your work and your activism matters. You are raising awareness, you are forcing this into the public eye, and you are documenting what is already being suppressed and censored and lied about. You are changing the world and restoring the narrative, one piece at a time. The importance of what you do cannot be overstated. We are part of a terrifying future history, and your work is instrumental in maintaining the truth of it.

Don't lose hope.

Free Palestine.

[pasparal]

Jinshui Bridge, Tiananmen, Beijing, 1964 Photographer: René Burri (1933–2014)