Sculpture parks are rare enough — certainly as compared with art museums — but the Liberty Sculpture Park is rarer still. It has a theme: the oppression of the Chinese government and the heroism of Chinese people who actively oppose it.
The park is in Yermo, Calif., in the Mojave Desert, about twelve miles from the town of Barstow. Yermo is known as “the Gateway of the Calicos,” i.e., the Calico Mountains.
There is a Marine base here — specifically, the Yermo Annex of the logistics base at Barstow.
And next to the park is EddieWorld: a gas station, but not just any gas station. This one has been called “the Disneyland of Gas Stations.” EddieWorld is, in fact, the largest gas station in California. There are many eateries inside, including Jedediah’s Jerky. Also, the place boasts “the cleanest restrooms on I-15.”
From the highway — and from EddieWorld — what stands out in the park is a huge bust, in the shape of the coronavirus molecule. On inspection, the bust is half Xi Jinping (the boss of the Chinese Communist Party, and therefore of China) and half skeleton. This artwork was unveiled on June 4, 2022.
(Photo by Jonas Yuan)
The date June 4 is not accidental. That is the date of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. It is a date very important to dissidents.
Weiming Chen is the sculptor of the coronavirus bust and of virtually all of the other works in the park. He has done more than one coronavirus bust. The first was unveiled in the park on June 4, 2021. Several weeks later, it was burned to the ground. Chen and his friends said that this crime was committed by agents of the Chinese government. Dissidents would say that, wouldn’t they? Yes, but . . .
In March 2022, the U.S. Justice Department charged five people with “stalking, harassing, and spying on U.S. residents on behalf of the PRC secret police.” Three of those people are connected with machinations against Chen. One of them has pleaded guilty, and the other cases are pending.
It took seven months to produce the first coronavirus bust. It took another seven months for Chen and his helpers to produce the second — identical to the first, except in one respect: It is made out of steel, the better to thwart arsonists. The bust weighs ten tons. (Its predecessor was of fiberglass.)
Weiming Chen, mid-construction (Jonas Yuan)
For Jonas Yuan, a young intellectual who assists Weiming Chen, I have a question. “Forgive me, but why would the Chinese government — the mighty Chinese government — care about a little sculpture park in a faraway desert?” Yuan answers, “They’re so petty.”
A perfect answer. In addition to monstrous — genocidal — the Chinese Communists are petty.
Chen maintains a studio about nine miles from the sculpture park. This morning, he and his team are welding a wave, which is to be part of a sculpture commemorating the “freedom swimmers”: people — thousands of them — who swam from mainland China to Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). Many of them, of course, did not survive the effort.
Weiming Chen at work
For lunch, Chen takes his team and me to Peggy Sue’s 50’s Diner. Did these Chinese-born people ever think they would be eating hamburgers in the California desert? Life is convulsive that way.
After lunch, we visit the park. Next to the coronavirus bust, Chen has left the first one — the ruins of it. In a way, the ruins make as powerful a statement as the second, and intact, bust.
One of Chen’s other sculptures depicts Li Wangyang, a Chinese democracy activist. He was arrested at Tiananmen Square, then imprisoned for 21 years. A year after his release, he was found hanged in a hospital room. The authorities said, naturally, “Suicide.” But they changed their line to “accidental death.” Dissidents have little doubt he was murdered.
On a plaque, Chen has a quotation from Li: “Everyone is responsible for the fate of the nation, and I will not yield, even if I am to be beheaded.”
Another of Chen’s sculptures is a giant “64” — just that number, silver, rising in the sky. It stands for “June 4.”
(Photo by Jonas Yuan)
Still another shows the “Tank Man,” that unidentified yet iconic person who, on June 5, 1989, stood in front of a column of tanks.
For Jonas Yuan, I have another possibly rude question. “Isn’t the park a little remote?” Yes, but the land out here is affordable. Moreover, says Yuan, we are roughly midway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas — a busy corridor. There’s EddieWorld. Plus a Tesla Supercharger.
An increasing number of people are visiting the park, says Yuan, with a “big proportion” of them Chinese, or Chinese American.
There is an aspect of the park that comes from visitors. On a fence, they hang various artworks, or signs — humble, homemade things. The signs speak of the visitors’ personal experiences or feelings. For instance, one sign decries the sexual violence of the Hong Kong police.
Another sign shows what purports to be the logo of the Hong Kong Jockey Club (a world-famous institution). Instead of a horse, there is a deer, a buck. Jonas Yuan explains. There is an old saying in China: “This is a horse.” You are looking at a deer — an animal that is plainly a deer — but your mouth says, “This is a horse.” Why? Because the political authorities demand that a deer be a horse. Up is down, black is white — and a deer is a horse.
This is the culture of the lie, into which the whole population is coopted.
Back at the studio, I have a leisurely talk with Weiming Chen. He was born in Hangzhou, in 1956. Hangzhou is a city in east-central China, about 100 miles southwest of Shanghai. Chen’s birthday is December 28. So was Liu Xiaobo’s, he points out. Liu was a year older than Chen, born in 1955.
Liu Xiaobo was a leader of the Chinese democracy movement and a political prisoner. In 2010, he received the Nobel Peace Prize, in absentia. He had been in prison since 2008. He died in 2017, surrounded by Red Guards.
Behind Weiming Chen, as we are sitting, is a bas-relief, sculpted by him. It shows Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize medal, and an empty chair. Such a chair was present at the Nobel ceremony, to symbolize the absent laureate.
Chen’s mother taught art and music in a high school. “Do you like music?” I ask Chen. He does. But a piano, or even a violin, was expensive. Pencils and paper — they were cheaper. This influenced the young Weiming Chen toward art.
His father taught physical education at a university. He was taken prisoner in 1957, the year after Weiming was born. The elder Chen was a victim of Mao’s “Anti-Rightist Campaign.” (A “rightist,” remember, was anyone suspected of having criticisms of the Communist Party. University personnel were especially suspicious.)
Weiming’s father was kept in prison for over 20 years — until 1978. Two of Weiming’s siblings were sent to the countryside, for “reeducation through labor.” The Chens were a typical Chinese family.
Growing up, Weiming could not dream of going to a university. He was from a “bad family,” you see. But when Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, loosened the country, Weiming had a chance. He took it, to go to the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.
Why sculpture, and not some other medium? Because, in books, Chen saw the Sphinx. And ancient statues of Buddha. And the Statue of Liberty. And Mount Rushmore. He was excited by these monumental works. This is much better than oil painting, he thought.
His sculptor heroes are Michelangelo and Rodin. How about political heroes? “Reagan,” he says — and all the great dissidents who have arisen in China.
After graduation, Chen taught art, and then he worked in a sculpture studio. Unlike Western cities, he says, Chinese cities have sculpture studios — official ones. Chen worked in one of these. Employees of such a studio make pieces for squares and parks, serving the party — celebrating Mao, for instance.
Chen wanted to go to America but could not obtain a visa. He applied to many, many countries — and the country that took him was New Zealand. He left China for New Zealand in 1988. Did he think he was leaving China forever? He did think that, yes. In 2007, he was able to come here to America.
Shortly after he arrived in New Zealand, he was commissioned to make a brass sculpture of Edmund Hillary, the great mountaineer, born in Auckland. Sir Edmund himself attended the unveiling.
Chen’s catalogue is large, but I will mention a few other pieces. He made a sculpture of the Goddess of Democracy — the symbol of the Tiananmen Square protesters. It was housed at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He made a bas-relief of the massacre. That was housed at another Hong Kong university, Lingnan.
He also made a sculpture called “Burning Tibet.” It depicts one of the self-immolators in that country. It stands in Dharamshala, India, the capital of the Tibetan diaspora.
In recent years, Beijing has cracked down on Hong Kong, making it a PRC city like any other. It perhaps goes without saying that Weiming Chen’s pieces at those universities have been removed.
I ask him, “Are you half artist, half dissident?” Not quite, he answers. He is an artist first. “But an artist always wants to be free. So a dictator is his natural enemy.”
He is a very unusual fellow, Weiming Chen, and a brave one. From 2012 to 2014, he made three trips to Syria, where he worked with the Free Syrian Army. Why? He says that foreigners have supported Chinese people in their effort to break free of the Communist dictatorship. He wanted to show Syrians that not all Chinese people support the Assad dictatorship, though Beijing does. He thought it was a matter of conscience, and national honor.
It was in 2016 that Chen, with partners, purchased the property in Yermo: 36 acres. His first piece for the Liberty Sculpture Park was a bust of Crazy Horse. Yes, Crazy Horse, the Oglala Sioux leader of the 19th century. It is the only piece in the park that is not explicitly Chinese. Chen wanted to “show respect,” he says, to the pre-colonial inhabitants of America. He also admires the fighting spirit of Crazy Horse.
When I ask what his personal favorite is — his favorite piece in the park — he gives an answer I was not expecting: “Crazy Horse.”
Chen plans to be working here at the park for the rest of his life. There will be more sculptures. He also hopes to raise enough money to build a museum, which will tell the stories of “people who have struggled for freedom in China,” as he says.
“Why have you done this?” I say. “Is the park an act of devotion? An act of protest? An act of the heart?” Chen says, “I want to record real history — true history. Because the Chinese government tells everyone history that is wrong. History that is not real. They say that the coronavirus comes from American soldiers. They say that no one died at Tiananmen Square. I use art — sculpture — to tell real history.”
If I know one thing about dissidents — and I have sat with a great many of them, from all over the world — it’s that, as a rule, they detest a lie.
At the end of our conversation, I ask Chen a standard question: “What should Americans know about China that they may not know?” He says, “They don’t know how evil the Chinese Communist Party is. Many people think of evil as something that’s in a movie, not in real life.”
China’s rulers, says Chen, “care only about power. Not human beings. People are just material to them” — material to be shaped and pushed around and smashed.
Weiming Chen is a serious artist whose life has led him to activism. “Dictators always want to control you,” he says. “We should do some things, not just talk some things. Make something like a park.” He has, and a unique and bold one.
