Goddess of Democracy
Sherman has also used performance art as a vehicle to express strongly held viewpoints and make political statements. During his 1989 tenure as president of the Los Angeles Artists' Equity Association, Sherman assisted artist Tom Van Sant with his "Goddess of Democracy" project in downtown Los Angeles. The 1000-pound statue was built by Van Sant and members of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Artists' Equity Association in support of the pro-democracy uprising by students in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Beijing artists had built a monumental "Goddess of Democracy" statue that had been destroyed by Chinese troops who stopped the rebellion with what became a bloody massacre. The Los Angeles "Goddess of Democracy" suffered a similar fate; vandals toppled the statue at its Chinatown location.