Weiming Chen, a sculptor who fled Communist China three decades ago to avoid political persecution, early this evening unveiled at Yermo’s Liberty Sculpture Park what may qualify as his two most provocative pieces: Victims of Communism,” and “CCP Virus.”
Closely visible from the northeast-bound lane of Interstate I-15, Liberty Sculpture Park is host to a number of statutes and displays, most by Chen. The overriding theme of the venue is freedom, freedom of the sort that Chen maintains is available in the United States and which is suppressed by the regime in his native country.
In 2017, Chen, who characterizes himself as equal parts sculptor and freedom activist, began erecting his statues in the Mojave Desert to celebrate the human spirit in its longing for freedom in the face of the oppression of tyranny, which in the modern world, according to Chen, is represented by communism.
Among the existing pieces at the park are a bust of Chief Crazy Horse, the inside of the headdress for which bears the phrase, “Give me liberty or give me death”; a statue of Chinese activist Li Wangyang; “Tank Man,” which shows the still-unidentified man with two shopping bags who stood down a tank on June 5, 1989 during protests that took place in Tiniananmen Square that year; the number “64,” which commemorates the Tiniananmen Square protests, which, according to unverified reports contradicted by the Chinese Communist Government, ended in the massacre of somewhere between 200 and 2,000 protesters; and the work “Liberate Hong Kong.”
As an observance of the 32nd year since the Tiananmen Square Massacre, Chen, who was born in Hangzhou, China in 1970 and now resides in both New Zealand and the United States, unveiled CCP Virus [i.e., Chinese Communist Party Virus] which shows a coronavirus cell melded into the head of a man’s head/skeleton. The intended statement is that the virus was created by a military/governmental lab in Wuhan, China. Such suggestions, even in the United States, were formerly dismissed as anti-Chinese propaganda, but the scientific community more recently has credited that account as being accurate.
Chen’s other sculpture unveiled today is titled “Victims of Communism.”
-Mark Gutglueck