Tracing Light and Shadow: The Noise of Freedom — June 4th 37th Anniversary Human Rights Photography Exhibition
In 1989 the call for democracy in Tiananmen Square was put down in blood, and countless people who had sought freedom and reform were forced into silence. Over 37 years the Chinese Communist Party has not only tried to erase the memory of June 4th but, through censorship, the reshaping of language, digital surveillance and transnational repression, has trimmed a mottled history into a single flawless official account.
But the truth has never been smooth or seamless. Images that are rough, shaky, overexposed, blurred, even full of noise are not defects to be filtered out — they are evidence that people once stood up, once resisted, once paid a price for freedom.
This exhibition takes “Testimony in the Noise” as its central idea. Through images of the Tiananmen massacre, Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement and anti-extradition movement, social movements in Taiwan, the oppression of the Uyghurs, and resistance to totalitarianism and transnational repression in different places, it looks steadily at the historical scenes that were never smoothed over and cannot be entirely erased by power.
From a square robbed of speech to a Hong Kong whose democratic hopes were cut short; from the gathering of one generation of Taiwanese civil society after another to the resistance that exiles and oppressed peoples continue abroad — these images all point to one thing: democracy and freedom have never been abstractions, but the traces left by particular people who, amid fear, loss and oppression, still chose to stand up.
June 4th, and the countless figures who have vanished from the landscapes of protest in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and around the world, were never cold numbers, and never noise to be filtered away. They were real people with dignity.
Through this exhibition we hope visitors will, among the light and the noise, recognize again the traces freedom leaves behind, and understand how memory becomes indictment, becomes resistance, and becomes the testimony of this era that cannot be argued away.
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Dates: May 25 – June 11, 2026
Hours: 09:00–18:00
Venue: Central Corridor, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
Admission: Free
Organized by: New School for Democracy Association
Supervised by: Ministry of Culture
Curator: Silver Wong
With thanks to: Kacey Wong, Chiu Wan-hsing (邱萬興), Zhou Fengsuo, the Human Rights Network for Tibet and Taiwan, Wu Wen-hsuan (吳文瑄), Shih Yi-hsiang, Lin Yu-tsang (林雨蒼), Tsai Chih-hao (蔡智豪), the Japan Uyghur Association, the Swedish Taiwanese Association, Humanitarian China, Catherine, JJchic, 芥蘭炒雞蛋, and the people of Hong Kong
(listed in no particular order)