panties on the square ::
:: a special thanks to Danwei for helping me learn that this image is actually an Ai Weiwei photograph. I honestly had no idea. For the longest time I thought it was just a Zuo Xiao Zu Zhuo (左小祖咒) album cover, which, incidentally, hung framed on the the wall of my Beijing apartment from 2003 to 2006. Does anyone know where I can find more information about this photo? // AjS
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June 8th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
According to this, “June 1994″ apparently sold for 208,404 yuan in 1997.
June 8th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
2007, that is.
June 8th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
@ jdmartinsen, thanks your your response. Great information. Do you know if it was taken on June 4th? I’m under the impression it was, but haven’t seen anything confirming that.
// AjS
June 8th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
I looked at this picture briefly in a Chinese art class I took last semester. There’s a writeup in “New China New Art” by Richard Vine:
The provocative June 1994 photo action, executed 5 years to the month after the Tiananmen massacre, shows leggy fellow artist Lu Qing (now Ai’s wife) lifting her nearly transparent skirt as she stands, bikini panties revealed, in front of the entrance gate to the Forbidden City. The famous portrait of Mao – who was puritanical in his social policies but known to frequently rejuvenate himself with bevies of compliant young women – stares out at us over her left shoulder. To one side, two dutiful men in uniform walk away obliviously; to the other, a disabled cadre in Cultural Revolution garb, his crutches propped in the motorized cart he drives, looks on in impotence. With the secret site of power thus exposed and an emergent liberality calmly flaunted, the viewer, like the outside world as a whole, is at once welcomed and challenged by this embodiment of the New China.