15 Gunshots...From 1989 to 2003

In Beijing’s National Art Gallery on 5 February 1989, Xiao Lu fired a handgun at her installation Dialogue. Part of the first official exhibition of ’unofficial’ art in post-Mao China, Dialogue was about communication difficulties between a man and a woman, with the gunshots intended to contribute ’destructive energy’. Following the shooting, the exhibition was temporarily closed. Xiao Lu turned herself in and was later released. A few months later, in the aftermath of the student-led protests at Tiananmen Square in June 1989, Xiao Lu fled to Sydney.

15 gunshots... from 1989 to 2003 can be seen as a sequel to Dialogue. Bidding farewell to 15 years of feeling betrayed and suppressed, Xiao Lu fired at the 15 framed photographs, each showing her posed with a pistol, to mark a new phase of creative practice. ’In 2003 I made the decision to look back and face my audience,’ said Xiao Lu. ’For the fifteen years since Dialogue I have had my back to the audience but at that time I wanted to meet their gaze. I felt that I must face their scrutiny, face the repercussions of those 1989 gunshots and face the past fifteen years.’