Chen Weiming’s most recently completed artwork is now on display at Liberty Sculpture Park in Yermo.
The three-dimensional piece was dropped into place in early June and unveiled in a ceremony held on June 4, 2023.
Known by the title “Chained Woman,” the sculpture embodies Weiming’s reaction to the video of a chained woman in Feng County, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China recorded in January 2022 and posted to social media.
An artist and human rights anti-communist activist and advocate for Chinese democracy, Weiming works in three-dimensional media to capture images of injustice and repression in the country of his birth. Weiming was born in Hangzhou, China, and emigrated to New Zealand in 1988. He holds a New Zealand passport as well as permanent residence in the United States, living in both countries.His previous works, which are displayed at Liberty Sculpture Park, include 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; the work “Liberate Hong Kong;” and CCP Virus [i.e., Chinese Communist Party Virus] which shows a coronavirus cell melded into the head of a man’s head/skeleton.
Social media sites that broadcast the video reported that the unnamed woman was repeatedly trafficked and forced to give birth to eight children. In the viral video, she was shackled and appeared to have been broken by subjugation, abuse and torture. When she saw someone was filming her, the woman, chain-bound, groaned: “This world does not want me anymore.”
The video, Weiming said, is evidence “of the tragic fate and endless suffering of women in China’s so-called prosperous age! “We should not only sympathize with the tragic Chained Woman who has suffered enough abuse, but continue to search for her whereabouts, and must also pay attention to the whereabouts of those conscientious people who cried out for her and disappeared such as Wuyi, and work hard to rescue them.”
The Sentinel today sojourned to Liberty Sculpture Park to capture images of Weiming’s latest work.