Humanitarian China & the Tiananmen Square Exhibition

For the 30th Anniversary of Tiananmen Square, AAAC announces the transfer of hundreds of artworks to the California based Humanitarian China organization. The purpose of the original goal will continue. Humanitarian China (HC) is going to carry on AAAC’s goal, the task of remembrance, by exhibiting, promoting, and preserving these artworks, to educate the public, to ensure that “China, June 4, 1989” as a primary reflection of an important historical movement, will not be forgotten.

Humanitarian China, a non-profit organization incorporated in California, by Fengsuo Zhou, Zhao Jing and Gang Xu, all student leaders from the Tiananmen movement, joins together with AAAC to renew the purpose and vitality of this effort. HC is dedicated to provide humanitarian care for political prisoners and Tiananmen Mothers in China, to preserve the history of China’s democracy movement and to educate the general public. Liberty Sculpture Park near Los Angeles, has become the new home of these precious artworks.

Arrival of the CHINA: June 4,1989 exhibition to Liberty Sculpture Park near LA

In assigning its care of the CHINA: June 4, 1989 exhibition to HC, the artworks created in the grip of that moment will keep vivid what was felt and link us to what is felt in the present - the meaning of Tiananmen Square today, enabling each generation to reflect upon the diversity of perspectives from many, many artists.

These artworks will become the centerpiece of a larger collection that will gather with time and become the first permanent June 4th museum committed to preserving this history and the struggle for freedom. This museum will collect and display other artist’s historical objects and artworks opposing censorship and forced amnesia.

Our sincere appreciation goes to all of the artists – some from Europe, Japan & China - who contributed their artworks to make this endeavor possible.

AAAC’s promise in the 1990s was to enable the people of China to see this art, see the support of people elsewhere for the people of China. With passing decades this vision faded. Along with another – the vision of a soldier in a small painting holding an empty milk bottle above a crying baby, painted in the Square in 1989 - its question is now answered. China has prospered. However, the portrait of that soldier, the ugly face of political control has brought to prominence the cost, the trade off China has made for material wealth. The crushing of political dissent, the spectacle and voices of Tiananmen Square are with us, even more now given the specter of fascism growing internationally, even here in the US of A. Reminders on how deeply eugenics was to a clearly American historical outlook remind us of the dangers at risk and the vigilance required. May the people of China and America not forget Tiananmen Square as together our human voyage unfolds.

-AAAC