I Have a Dream That I Will Stand on Tiananmen and Shoot the Oriental Arrow
He Jie
何杰
Production date
2006
Object Detail
Media
oil on canvas
Measurements
triptych 240 x 540 cm
Notes
He Jie’s triptych appropriates a famous 1953 propaganda painting by Dong Xiwen titled 'The Founding of the Nation', depicting Mao Zedong declaring the establishment of the People's Republic of China at Tiananmen in 1949 . The Dong Xiwen work was repainted several times to erase officials who had fallen out of favour and been erased in successive purges. In 1954-55, Dong removed the figure of Gao Gang, and in 1972, erased Liu Shaoqi. It was painted again in 1976 (after the artist's death), putting both figures back, following the fall of the Gang of Four. He Jie’s monochrome version removes both Mao and the party apparatchiks from Dong Xiwen’s scene and replaces them with a single Mongolian archer in Red Army uniform, his arrow aimed towards the place where Mao’s head was. The figure of the archier— headless and pierced by arrows—is for the artist “a symbol of the future trajectory of the revolution”.
Accession number
2007.044