About 200 Hong Kong activists yesterday held a 'performance art show', demanding the release of mainland artist Ai Weiwei ahead of the one-month anniversary of his detention by the mainland authorities.
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China put up 1,001 chairs in the Victoria Park - a reference to Ai's 2007 work Fairytale: 1,001 Qing Dynasty Wooden Chairs.
The chairs were arranged in the shape of the Chinese character for 'imprison' - made up of a square surrounding the character for 'people'. Activists sat on chairs that formed the character for 'people' and left the others unoccupied - leaving them 'locked in' by a square-wall of empty chairs.
Empty chairs became a symbol of resistance on the mainland after the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to dissident writer Liu Xiaobo , was placed on an empty chair because Liu was in jail and could not go to Oslo to collect the prize.
The show ended with the activists getting up and symbolically breaking through the lines of empty chairs.
'This is the kind of performance art that Ai did before [his detention]. By breaking through the square wall of empty chairs, we expressed our demand to end the one-party rule of the Communist Party, so that the 'people' inside can be freed,' said Lee Cheuk-yan, chairman of the alliance.