Retrieved Paper Eagle Sculpture Close Up

2/5/20: The Fly to Freedom paper sculptures were created by survivors of the Golden Venture, a ship that trafficked 286 undocumented Chinese passengers from Fujian province in China and ran aground off New York City in 1993. Ten people drowned as they attempted to flee the sinking ship. The story of the survivors and their subsequent years of legal limbo in jail as they awaited the possibility of deportation was a watershed moment in U.S. immigration policy. The outcome of their fate became a test of the system of detaining asylum-seekers in prisons.

To pass the time while they awaited their fate, the survivors created paper sculptures based on the Chinese paper-folding art form called zhezhi. They chose to make sculptures of items symbolizing freedom and the American Dream such as eagles, folding magazine covers and tissue paper into small triangles to make the wings.

These sculptures proved to be a watershed for the zhezhi paper-folding art form as well; the techniques revolutionized by the survivors combined with their use of a form of papier-mâché are considered so innovative that it is now known as ‘Golden Venture folding.’