The well being of the Chinese language artist Gao Zhen is deteriorating in detention. In response to Human Rights Watch (HRW) and his household, the 69-year-old artist fainted final month and suffers from a persistent again drawback. The artist, who usually works together with his brother Gao Qiang, has been detained since 26 August 2024 within the metropolis of Sanhe in Hebei Province beneath prices of “slandering China’s heroes and martyrs” utilized retroactively to the Gao Brothers’ satirical depictions of Mao Zedong; 118 of their works have additionally been confiscated. Gao Zhen’s spouse and seven-year-old baby, an American resident and citizen, respectively, will not be being permitted to depart China.
“Gao Zhen’s trial has been postponed for undisclosed causes, and this may be associated to the truth that Gao Zhen’s case entails extra China-US relations as Gao Zhen is a US everlasting resident and particularly his son, who’s implicated and unable to return to the US, is a US citizen,” supply linked to the case who prefers to stay nameless tells The Artwork Newspaper. The household “stays hopeful that by way of the US authorities continued diplomatic efforts, Gao Zhen will quickly be reunited together with his household and in a position to return to the US”.
In an announcement earlier this month, HRW particulars that detention centre medical doctors advised Gao Zhen’s household that he could have arteriosclerosis, the arterial hardening that may result in a stroke. His again drawback has necessitated his sitting in a wheelchair throughout conferences together with his lawyer, and he has been held in a 40-sq.-m cell with 14 different detainees. His utility for medical bail was rejected.
The Gao Brothers have been main figures of Beijing’s pre-commercial avant-garde within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s. The works seized from Gao’s studio on 17 November 2024 have been made between 2005 and 2009. They embrace sculptures, work and images such because the Miss Mao Sequence, sculptures depicting Mao with breasts, The Execution of Christ (2009), of a Chinese language firing squad aiming at Jesus Christ, and Mao’s Guilt (2009), a sculpture of a kneeling, remorseful Mao. The authorities allege the works “distort and vilify former nationwide leaders” beneath a legislation launched in 2021. The cost carries a three-year sentence.
In response to HRW, the prosecution of Gao Zhen displays how the president, Xi Jinping, has directed the Chinese language authorities to tighten ideological management and regulate speech thought of unpatriotic. “The Chinese language authorities’ prosecution of Gao Zhen each violates his fundamental rights and signifies a step again towards China’s painful previous. Critique about Mao’s brutal legacy, as soon as tolerated, now appears to be off-limits,” Elaine Pearson, the Asia director at Human Rights Watch, mentioned within the assertion.
“Gao Zhen is dealing with years in jail for holding up a mirror to China’s previous,” Pearson added. “The Chinese language authorities ought to break free from its abusive previous practices, drop the fees towards Gao and instantly launch him.”
Greater than 20,000 individuals have now signed a Change.org petition calling for Gao Zhen’s launch. Shortly after Gao was detained in August 2024, an announcement calling for his launch circulated by Gao Qiang was signed by 181 Chinese language cultural luminaries, together with the film-maker Wang Xiaoshuai, the writers Ma Jian, Jung Chang and Ye Fu, and the artists Xiao Lu, Han Bing and Meng Huan. The letter compares Gao Zhen’s detention to the “persecutions of the Cultural Revolution”, throughout which the Gao Brothers’ father’s dying whereas detained as a “counter-revolutionary” was labelled a suicide. The signatories declared: “We really feel that management over the artwork group in China is tightening, and anybody might turn into the subsequent detainee. That is clearly not the sort of case the Chinese language authorities would need seen on the worldwide stage because it opens up and globalises.”
This August, the exiled Chinese language artist Ai Weiwei revealed a letter Gao Zhen despatched him discussing the parallels between his ongoing detention and Ai’s 81-day detention in China in 2011. “In comparison with your time, [the response] feels extra like a silent pantomime,” Gao wrote. “To stay fully silent is to willingly give up the best of free expression that artists should have, and the best to freedom of speech we’re all entitled to. If my case units a precedent, it could result in comparable works and artists being subjected to the identical destiny.”
