"Pillar of Shame” turned away by logistics companies: artist

The artist behind "Pillar of Shame" said the sculpture was turned away by many logistics companies as he prepared to transport it out of Hong Kong.  

The two-ton copper artwork commemorating the victims of China's 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown was dismantled and removed from the campus where it had been on display for more than two decades, with the university citing legal and other concerns.    

Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, as well as two shipping companies and lawyers, have been ready to transport Pillar of Shame out of Hong Kong.   

But he had reached out to at least 10 logistics companies, all of which refused to ship the sculpture to the pier for fear of retaliation from the Chinese authorities.  

The team said they are figuring out a way to do so, describing the process as not easy.  

Galschiot revealed that several three- to four-meter-high bronze sculptures of the Pillar of Shame were being made in Denmark for permanent display at world-renowned universities. Meanwhile, he was planning to convert car trailers into mobile versions of the Pillar of Shame for display in different places.  

In a statement issued last December, the Council of the University of Hong Kong stated, "no party has ever obtained any approval from the University to display the statue on campus", saying displaying the sculpture poses legal risks to the school.   

Former chief of the HKU Council Arthur Li Kwok-cheung said on Commercial Radio in early January that the Pillar of Shame was a "scam" and "irrelevant" to the crackdown.   

He noted that Galschiot originally created the statue to commemorate the Oklahoma City bombing that took place in the US in April 1995, and the faces crafted on the statue belonged to Westerners and not Chinese people.  

The Danish sculptor had since hit back at his criticism and said the Pillar of Shame was created with the intention to "create a monument that remembered various landmark crimes against humanity around the world."