The “Goddess of Democracy” was a ten meter high statue created during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The statue was constructed in only four days out of Styrofoam and paper-Mache over a metal armature by students of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. The students made the statue as large as possible so that the government would be unable to dismantle it, forcing them to either destroy it or leave it standing.
The students began building the statue on May 27 at their university. It was built in the hopes that it would be invigorate the movement which was perceived to be losing some of its momentum. The students were influenced by the work of Russian sculptor Vera Mukhina, associated with the school of revolutionary realism.
When the State Security Bureau heard that the students planned to transport pieces of the statue to the Square, they declared that any truck drivers helping them would lose their licenses. The students hired six Beijing carts and leaked false information to throw off the authorities. It worked and at dusk on May 29, with fewer than 10,000 protesters remaining in the Square, the students began assembling the statue. By the early morning of May 30, the statue was fully assembled in Tiananmen Square and unveiled to as many as 300,000 spectators.










































