Rainbow over Tiananmen

Rainbow over Tiananmen, 2024
Oil on linen
50cm x 60cm
[In Private Collection]

Throughout the Chinese Empire the Tiananmen Gate has been a symbol of absolute power. For centuries the names of those who reached the highest level in the civil service exams feeding the hierarchical state bureaucracy in service of the emperor were proclaimed at the gate.

On May Fourth 1919, the Tiananmen Square was at the center of  anti-imperialist protests against the Treaty of Versailles which would assign Chinese territory in Shandong province that had been surrendered by Germany to Japan; the treaty was not signed. The protests were part of the  larger anti-traditional New Culture Movement in China promoting electoral politics and scientific methods.

Mao’s image and the Chinese Communist Party’s symbols, slogans, and flags were not yet attached to the Tiananmen Gate.

On June Fourth 1989, the crackdown of the demonstrations on the Tiananmen Square following a decade of Opening Up with relative liberalization brought a sudden end to ‘China’s most remarkable decade’, as Yasheng Huang calls it.

The Tiananmen Gate symbolizes the dynamics between absolute control and the human urge for autonomy and citizenship.