Great Firewall
ARTIST STATEMENT: Great Firewall
by JENNIFER LYNN BATES AND LINDSAY BUEHLER
Great Firewall is a wall quilt constructed of 24 individual quilt blocks (panels) which create an overall composition inspired by an historic quilt pattern. The fragmented pieces of text and visual imagery are stitched together in collage, with some information remaining obscured and obstructed. Violent stitches and translucent layers of paint overlay text; powerful shapes crop historical and contemporary images. The original pattern is inspired by the Great Wall of China, Russian Constructivism, and the Crazy Quilt. Crazy Quilts were popular in the US in the 1800’s and celebrated an age of progress. Great Firewall uses the Crazy Quilt blocks as a way to show disorder and its containment within the overall formal grid system.
Great Firewall represents the vast and systematic expansion of Chinese internet censorship in efforts to block internet access for its citizens. It is a modern example of a government controlling access to information. Yet, this human rights issue has impacted many people groups for many centuries. Using traditional media, such as fabrics and threads, and non-traditional media, such as papers, photographs, gold-leaf, oil bar, and paint, Bates and Buehler “piece” together a wall quilt of monumental scale. Great Firewall is a symbol of all walls and barriers preventing citizens from accessing information and the freedom that comes with it.
Haihang, a former Wartburg international student of Bates’, was the impetus for this work. He knew nothing of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests until coming to the US for a college education. This bothered him immensely, and became a theme of his drawings and paintings. Within the Dictators & Dreamers series, Bates has created portraits of both Chinese former president Hu Jintao, and citizen Haihang.