A lead-covered wooden panel presents a raised inscription reading ‘Senza Arte’ (Without Art) on its right-hand side. The upper side’s protruding edge references the frames open to the sides in the ‘Interno/Esterno’ exhibition-installation (inv. 3760). In the top left, a photograph of one of the students from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, taken moments before he was shot,1 is screened by a violette aniline veils.
This artwork was part of a five-piece series constructed using the same concept (inv. 484, 994–97), in which the photographic sequence of the execution is filtered through methyl violet, pure yellow and dark blue aniline dyes. Tienanmen was made for Studenti (inv. 3758), an installation of artworks in which lead was the predominant material and the body of young individuals, with all their energy, eroticism, creativity and political involvement, the main subject.

1. See inv. 1006. The same photographs, also present in other works of Studenti, were used a few years later in Cina Asia Nuova (inv. 444).