Pillar of Shame
sculpture series by Jens Galschiøt
Pillar of Shame is a series of sculptures by Danish artist Jens Galschiøt memorialising the loss of life during the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing, China, committed by the Chinese Communist Party. Each sculpture is an eight metres (26 ft) tall statue of bronze, copper or concrete.
The first sculpture was inaugurated at the NGO Forum of the FAO summit in Rome, Italy in 1996. Since then three other pillars have been erected, in Victoria Park, Hong Kong; Acteal, Mexico; and Brasília, Brazil. A fifth in Berlin, Germany, was planned for completion in 2002, but the plan did not come to fruition due to funding issues, although a replica was publicly displayed for a month in 2023.
Symbolism
According to Galschiøt, the sculptures remind people of a shameful event which must never recur. The torn and twisted bodies of the sculpture symbolize the degradation, devaluation and lack of respect for the individual. The black colour symbolises grief and loss and the sculpture, which represents the victims, expresses the pain and the despair of the event. It can be used by both sides in complicated conflict situations, where it can be difficult to point out the guilty party.
Pillar of Shame in Hong Kong
The Pillar of Shame (Chinese: 國殤之柱; Jyutping: gwok3 soeng1 zi1 cyu5; pinyin: Guóshāng zhī Zhù; lit.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2307544. Authority coordinates are 22.283, 114.136. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1996, 2002 and 2023.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pillar of Shame” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.