Seven Sparrows
Liu Zhuoquan
刘卓泉
Production date
2012
Object Detail
Media
Chinese pigments on glass light fittings and bottles
Measurements
8 pieces, dimensions variable
Notes
In Seven Sparrows (2011), beautifully painted birds appear to flutter helplessly in their death throes inside glass light fittings. This is Liu Zhuoquan’s meditation on tragic events in his own life. During the Cultural Revolution his father was exiled to the countryside to do farm labour, where he was forced to chase birds from the crops. Like Bottles and Babies, the work is layered with multiple meanings, and also references Mao’s ill-fated 1958 ‘Four Pests’ campaign in which farmers were exhorted to kill sparrows because they were eating the crops. People all over China obediently banged saucepans and beat drums, preventing the birds landing until they fell to earth, exhausted. With the death of the birds and the destruction of a complex interconnected ecosystem, a plague of insects consumed the harvest, one cause of the subsequent famine in which it is believed forty million people starved to death. Liu felt his father’s humiliation keenly. The seventh ‘sparrow’ is the figure of a dangling corpse, representing the artist’s sorrow when he saw his father’s frail body after death, like a broken bird. It is also a contemporary allusion, based on Chinese news images of beaten and executed prisoners, part of an ongoing body of work that examines issues of crime and punishment in China. The ‘sparrow’ is a slang term for a brutal method of interrogation.
Accession number
2012.066