ABSTRACT
It was the "Goddess of Democracy" statue that stood for five days in Tiananmen Square, from May 30 to the morning of June 4, 1989. It may be difficult for foreign artists and art scholars, with their strong feelings about originality and individualism, to accept the fact that there was no single artist for the Goddess of Democracy. It was as close to a true collaborative work as any project of this kind can be. As the unveiling statement had said, it was intended from the beginning to be ephemeral and yet to endure as an image of the desire of the great mass of Chinese people for the ideals it symbolized, liberty and democracy. The students knew from their training that a draped figure not based on a fully worked-out body underneath would be structurally unconvincing. This was the unlikely beginning from which the Goddess of Democracy was to be developed through a remarkable process of transformation.
