The roadside attraction is an American invention, and none could be more quintessentially American than the one abutting the northbound lane of Interstate 15, smack dab in the middle of the Mojave Desert.
Liberty Statue Park is an open-air memorial to the human desire for freedom. Located on a 36-acre tract, it was founded in 2017 by Chinese-born dissident artist Weiming Chen. The first sculpture Mr. Chen, 66, made for the space was a 15-foot-high bust of the Native American warrior Crazy Horse. In 2018 Mr. Chen added a statue of Li Wangyang, a Chinese labor activist who died under mysterious circumstances in 2012.
The following year, he created what the park heralds as тАЬthe worldтАЩs largest monument to the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre.тАЭ The sculpture stands atop a bronze-relief mural depicting scenes from June 4, 1989, when the Chinese government brutally suppressed a peaceful pro-democracy demonstration in the heart of Beijing. Another statue, тАЬTank Man,тАЭ is a life-size portrayal of the moment an unidentified man holding a briefcase defiantly stared down a column of tanks at Tiananmen.
