Tiananmen Square (2005) is a conceptual painting project in which I commissioned artists working in the painting factories in Dafen, China to reproduce the iconic image of a lone figure standing in front of tanks during the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square. This image is banned in China, and the work probes the limits of censorship and the implications of authorship. In order to protect the Dafen factory creators, these paintings conceal the painters' names, hinting at their participation only in fragments of email conversation embedded in the titles: for instance, "Kindly Please Follow the Instructions for Online Payment," and "The man and the white lights will be painted or not?" By attempting to disseminate this banned image through the art market, Tiananmen Square is both a quiet protest and memorial of erasure.
