Unerasable Memories
A Historic Look at the Videobrasil Collection. Conflictual episodes of history based on the personal perspectives of renowned artists. Curator: Agustín Pérez Rubio.
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The Unforgettable Memory, 2009
Video, 10’17”
To discuss the massacre of Chinese students who confronted power at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, in 1989, Liu Wei works from a realm that is at once intimate and transpersonal. The photograph of a man who stands alone facing a line of war tanks on the square, overrun by Chinese troops —one of the most iconic images of the 20th century— is the code for accessing memories blocked out by fear and censorship. The artist approaches passersby and questions them about the event. The question is repeatedly met with denial and evasion; the massacre is a taboo topic. There is no complicity, empathy, mourning, or grief; faced with the picture, everyone falls silent or runs away from the camera and their own memories.
Liu Wei straddles the lines between painting, drawing, video, and photography, focusing his research on the historical changes in China over the past century. He has featured in group shows like Opera: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video, Smart Museum of Art, Chicago (2014); EXPO 1, MoMA PS1, New York (2013); Video, An Art, A History 1965 – 2010, Singapore Art Museum (2011); and the Sharjah Biennial (2009), and in film, video, and documentary festivals like the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2002, 2010), Cinéma du Réel (2006, 2010), and Transmediale (2006).
© Still: Liu Wei
A Historic Look at the Videobrasil Collection. Conflictual episodes of history based on the personal perspectives of renowned artists. Curator: Agustín Pérez Rubio.