Florida Lawyer Admits to Bombing Gao Brothers Statue
Christopher Rodriguez confessed to bombing a polished stainless steel sculpture of Mao Zedong and Vladimir Lenin in 2022.
Gao Brothers, Miss Mao Trying to Poise Herself at the Top of Lenin's Head (2009). Exhibition view: In-transit-ion, Vancouver Biennale (2009–2011). Courtesy Vancouver Biennale.
A Florida attorney has pleaded guilty to detonating explosives placed at the base of a 4,000 kg statue of communist leaders Mao Zedong and Vladimir Lenin in San Antonio, Texas, in 2022.
Christopher Rodriguez, 45, also attempted to bomb the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C. last year.
The statue he bombed was the Gao Brothers' Miss Mao Trying to Poise Herself at the Top of Lenin's Head (2009).
A small feminised Mao figure balances on the head of an exponentially larger, frowning Lenin, satirising Communist China's indebtedness to Soviet political thought.
The massive polished steel head was brought to Texas by San Antonio developer James Lifschutz in 2022. Lifschutz said that while he admires the provocative nature of the Gao Brothers' work, he was mostly attracted by Miss Mao's scale and shiny surface.
Beijing-based artists Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang were personally impacted by Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), a period of massive political upheaval ostensibly designed to weed out counter revolutionaries.
Their father, a labourer, was among an estimated two million Chinese people executed for exhibiting what the artists call 'intellectual and bourgeois' tendencies.
Their controversial art saw the pair confined to China between 1989 and 2003. Notably, they missed curator Harald Szeemann's invitation to partake in the 2001 Venice Biennale after their passport application was denied.
According to material written for the 2009 Vancouver Biennale, where the artwork was first shown, the Gao brothers could not exhibit their work in China, and when Chinese authorities saw Miss Mao in the artists' studio they asked the artists to cover it up.
Rodriguez remains in custody in Louisiana where he was arrested last November. He and prosecutors have agreed to a term of seven to ten years followed by three years of supervised release in anticipation of his sentencing date in Washington on 28 October. —[O]
