Comrade Liberty – Wang Qingsong’s latest work, “Goddess” By Julie Bosman
2011
Shooting process
HEIGHT OF PLASTER MODEL: 24 inches
AMOUNT OF CLAY USED FOR FULL-SIZE STATUE: more than 20 tons
CONSTRUCTION DURATION: 22 days
TIME NEEDED TO DISMANTLE: 7 days
NUMBER OF CHICKENS USED IN PHOTO SHOOT: 18 to 20
Approaching the Statue of Liberty by boat for the first time in 1999, Wang Qingsong had visions of Botticelli. ‘‘It was just a little bit like ‘The Birth of Venus,’ ’’ he said. ‘‘It was a goddess born from the water.’’ Twelve years later, he took that image as inspiration for ‘‘Goddess,’’ featuring a 26-by-19-foot clay sculpture built in his studio in Songzhuang, an artists’ village on the outskirts of Beijing. As with all of his work, Wang constructs elaborate tableaux, which he then photographs and dismantles. For ‘‘Goddess,’’ he imagined Lady Liberty in a Mao suit, a reflection of China’s struggle between two ideals: the beliefs of the chairman and the tenets of democracy. The scaffolding around the sculpture alludes to the vast unfinished construction sites in China; the chickens that wander through the rubble enjoy a freedom that he believes the Chinese people do not. Though he has had only a few direct confrontations with the authorities (usually over nudity), Wang expects ‘‘Goddess’’ to be controversial. ‘‘People have lost their dreams and their ideals,’’ he said. ‘‘As an artist, as a citizen, I am very puzzled about where we are going and why we are lost.’’ — Julie Bosman
Wang Qingsong’s latest work, “Goddess”, 180x250cm, c-print, 2011, was featured on LOOK Session on NY Times Sunday Magazine, Oct. 16, 2011.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/16/magazine/LOOKchina.html
Source: Originally published in The New York Times Magazine, October 16, 2011. Provided here via the NYT archive mirror because the original interactive URL is no longer accessible.