A Florida attorney has pleaded guilty to two bombings against targets affiliated with China, one an artwork in San Antonio, Texas.
Christopher Rodriguez, 45, of Panama City, Florida, pleaded guilty on Friday to charges of “damaging property occupied by a foreign government, explosive materials—malicious damage to federal property, and receipt or possession of an unregistered firearm (destructive device).” U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves of the District of Columbia and Special Agent in Charge Craig B. Kailimai of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Washington Field Division announced the news.
The ATF arrested Rodriguez on November 4, 2023, in Lafayette, Louisiana, and he remains in custody.
While his attacks seem to express antipathy toward the Chinese, Rodriguez’s first attack was, ironically, against an artwork that satirizes Mao Zedong.
In early November 2022, Rodriguez drove a rented vehicle from Pensacola, Florida, to San Antonio, where, at about 2:25 a.m. on November 7, he climbed an eight-foot fence to get into a downtown courtyard that was the site of a 21-foot-tall, 8,800-pound stainless steel sculpture Miss Mao Trying to Poise Herself at the Top of Lenin’s Head (2009) by the Beijing-based Gao Brothers, Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang. After placing two canisters of explosive material at the foot of the sculpture, he shot at the canisters with a rifle, causing them to explode, leading to “significant damage,” according to the authorities.
Gao Zhen (left) and Gao Qiang (right) with Dagmar Carnevale Lavezzoli at the performance of the Gao Brothers’ “Utopia of the Embrace” at Spikersuppa in Oslo, Norway May 28, 2019. Photo: Kimberli Mäkäräinen, via Wikimedia Commons.
In the work, a relatively tiny, naked version of Mao stands atop the head of the founding Soviet premier, holding a balancing pole as if walking a tightrope. The figure is feminized because during the Cultural Revolution, the brothers have said, “Chinese people were forced to believe that Mao was the mother of the country.” The piece seems to comment on the two historical figures’ relative importance, as it was Lenin’s Communist philosophy that was taken up in China.
The massive stainless steel sculpture was placed there in March 2022 by San Antonio developer and art collector James Lifschutz, in collaboration with the artists and Houston’s Deborah Colton Gallery, which represents them.
When it was installed, the San Antonio Report described the block as “long forlorn… with multiple vacant buildings and surrounded by construction zones.”
“It’s monumental and shiny, and I like it,” Lifshutz told the paper.
The personal background of the piece, however, is anything but shiny. The Gao Brothers’ father was executed in 1968 during Mao’s Cultural Revolution due to his “intellectual and bourgeois” tendencies, according to the Vancouver Biennale, which previously exhibited the piece. The artists have repeatedly come under scrutiny from the Chinese government, which has closed their exhibitions, raided their studios, and confiscated their work.
Rodriguez’s actions against China didn’t end there. In September 2023, he attempted to bomb the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. using the same method, but he missed his target and the explosives failed to detonate.