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Review of ‘Requiem’ in Berlin 2009

China work 1998-2004

Requiem for Tiananmen—'An Artist's Responsibility'

By Christian Schlierkamp

Epoch Times Staff

Created: Aug 20, 2009 Last Updated: Aug 21, 2009

A nightmare bathed in red and violence! Three huge framed canvases present to the viewer a massive panorama of brutality: one artist’s representation of how a massive student massacre erupted in 1989 in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Its vivid realism makes it hard to imagine that

any other work of art could more aptly express the essence of this event.

The workmanship of the middle frame of the panorama is highly lacquered, reminding the viewer of lacquered antique Chinese furniture. The symmetrically spaced holes in the canvas allude to the barrage of dum-dum shots levied at the Chinese students. The two flanking canvases are evocative of piles of torn and burned flesh.

Irish artist Leonard Sheil's "Requiem for Tiananmen" is a work of art that makes people uneasy:

an anguished outcry of the most gruesome malediction leveled against humanity in China's

recent history.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the June 20, 1989 massacre, the artist was looking for a specific exhibition venue. He found it at Jan Hughes and Brian Hackney's gallery "Turn Berlin," at

Josetti Hoefe, in Berlin's Centrum. He discovered, after the venue was decided upon, that the

gallery is located in close proximity to the Chinese Legation. Ultimately, no other site in Berlin could have been more appropriate, due to the frequency of human rights demonstrations occurring

outside the residence, in protest against the transgressions of the regime in China.

Dublin-born Sheil spent an academic year in China, in 1986, with the opening up of the country to

the west, and when the west’s perception of China was at its lowest point. He remembers the overpowering, depressing culture shock that enveloped him, upon his arrival in Beijing: he was

greeted by a labyrinth of high-rise canyons where he was forced to orient himself without written language and speech. Eventually, he participated in meetings and protest events with other

students from the Language and Culture Academy, unaware that these events would foreshadow

the imminent, epic student protest movement.

Both before and after the violent suppression at Tiananmen Square, Sheil attempted to keep in

contact with his Chinese friends, which proved difficult, due to the limited means of communication

back then. He still wonders how many of the people he had known had become victims of the massacre. It took him 12 years before he began work on his painting. The work became his

constant companion for four straight years.

"I believe the protests had given me the incentive to begin painting," so conveyed Sheil to the Epoch Times. “My original intent was not to produce a political work. But over time this project took on its

own momentum, and as I became privy to more information about those who lost their lives at Tiananmen, the greater became my need to moderate my impressions of China and reduce the

inherent elements to what you see in this three-part painting, instead of creating a series of representative pictures. I had to distance myself from the anecdotal details [and synthesize my experience into the work shown here]. I clearly remember standing before this huge red wall outside the Emperor's Palace. The walls spoke, and the Reds of China seemed to permeate everything.

Questioned where the artist's responsibility lies regarding such huge crimes against humanity,

Shell replied, "An artist's abilities are closely tied to his responsibilities, but no one ought to feel pressure to act on it. It truly becomes a question of conscience.

Once I had returned from China, I kept a vital interest in the country and her people. I must admit

that I was naive about China - did not known anything before I arrived there. Had I read things about China as I did upon my return, things might have turned out differently. Now it [China] is a

phenomenon, developing at break-neck speed into a world power. At the same time I am profoundly sad that a whole generation of Chinese have grown up, knowing nothing or are ignorant of what really happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989. The regime’s ability to block anything undesirable via a firewall, or blithely sweep things under the carpet represents a crime for our present time.

Many nations, including my own, engage in trade with China and levy scant criticism at her for her recent crime sprees. That is unconscionable!”

An outspoken critic of the Tiananmen student massacre, the distinguished American author,

Norman Mailer, was asked what he feared most. He responded without hesitation: "China [once

more] advancing!"