China|The Chinese Gao Zhen is suspected of a recently invented crime called insulting heroes and martyrs. “It is questionable whether Mao was a hero or a martyr,” says the brother of the arrested person to HS.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
Artist Gao Zhen was arrested in China in August while visiting relatives.
Gao Zhen is accused of insulting China’s heroes and martyrs.
The police confiscated Gao’s artworks dealing with Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution.
Gao Qiang tells HS that the political climate in China has tightened in recent years.
At the beginning of the year 2022 artist Gao Zhen was packing up in Beijing’s 798 art district. The time had come for him to move out of his long-term studio in the famous art district. HS went to meet at that time migrating Gao.
At that time, free-thinking artists had already been driven away from the center of the capital to the provinces and abroad for years. Gao was the last of them when he moved his office to Yanjiao on the outskirts of Beijing and moved to New York himself.
A couple of weeks ago at the end of August, Gao, 68, was unexpectedly arrested in China. He was just there to visit, to see his relatives.
Gao and his brother Gao Qiang62, is known as an art collective called the Gao Brothers. They are among the most significant contemporary art creators in China. Many of their best-known works comment on China’s political history.
Gao Qiang, who is staying in the United States, confirmed the news of his brother’s arrest to HS.
Gao Brothers’ performance at the Kandinsky Prize award ceremony in Moscow in 2008. In the sculpture, Vladimir Lenin is revealed from inside Mao Zhedong’s head.
Detail of the large-scale Gao Brothers sculpture in front of the ACE Gallery in Los Angeles. In it, the figure of Miss Mao balances on top of an enormous Lenin’s head.
The piece entitled The Miserable Prostitute was featured in the Gao Brothers’ exhibition in Beijing in 2007. At that time, they were still able to show their work publicly in their hometown.
Gao Zhen in the middle of an installation called The Execution of Christ in his studio in Beijing’s 798 district in 2015. In the work, gunmen who look like Mao Zedong aim at a Jesus figure who is not visible in the picture.
Gao Zhen is suspected of a crime called insulting China’s heroes and martyrs, Gao Qiang told HS by email. The relevant law was enacted in 2018, and since 2021 insulting heroes has been a crime that can be prosecuted by the public prosecutor.
According to the law, people have been sentenced to, for example, seven months in prison for criticizing a propaganda film about the Korean War, says China Media Project website. The crime can be sentenced to up to three years in prison, he says The New York Times.
When the police searched Gao last week, the police took as evidence artworks that deal with Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution, Gao Qiang says. According to him, they were all made more than ten years ago.
Mao was the founder of the People’s Republic of China. The Cultural Revolution was a violent conflict started by Mao that killed at least hundreds of thousands of Chinese, among them the father of the Gao brothers.
Gao Qian points out that the rule of law does not include retroactive application of laws. “Furthermore, it is also questionable whether Mao meets the definition of a hero or a martyr.”
The Gao brothers have been questioning the truth of the Communist Party ruling China with their pictures, sculptures and performances since the 1980s. Their well-known works include, for example, versions Miss Mao – character. The sculpture has the head of a Mao, a long nose reminiscent of Pinocchio and the breasts of a woman.
The brothers’ work has been exhibited in important museums and galleries, mostly abroad. In China, they have been able to show them to the public to a very limited extent.
Unlike China’s perhaps most famous contemporary
artist Ai Weiweithe Gao brothers have been working in China since the 1980s. The reason was largely that they were not issued passports until 2003.
Still, the authorities have allowed them to be quite at peace, unlike Ain, who was detained and under house arrest for a long time after moving to China.
“When Ai Weiwei was arrested ten years ago, we were never arrested, although we got into a lot of trouble for giving interviews to the Western media and for creating and exhibiting sensitive works,” Gao Qian recalls.
Gao according to the brother, the arrest shows that China’s free space has significantly shrunk since those years.
“I haven’t been to China myself for many years, but many of my friends in China have told me that the changes in the past ten years have been significant and diverse,” says Gao Qiang.
“The environment has become even more challenging for artists. Creating jobs that are not in line with the government’s views is associated with ever greater risks.”
According to him, the change in the possibilities for artists is a reflection of wider changes in Chinese society.
“Political and social freedoms are increasingly restricted.”
Gao Qiang says she is also worried about the mental and physical well-being of her arrested brother. According to him, the authorities also prevented Gao Zhen’s wife from leaving the country when she went to the airport in early September to return to the United States with her school-age child.
“They told him that he is a national security risk and must not leave,” says Gao.
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