27°C | Light rain
Oct 27, 2011
Two art exhibitions featuring works carrying political and social messages have been cancelled over last weekend, the artists involved said.
That came after the nation's leaders said at the Communist Party Central Committee's annual session last week that they would boost "core socialist values" and shore up "cultural security".
A conceptual art exhibition featuring works by about 30 artists had been scheduled for last Saturday at the Mobile Museum of Art in the Shunyi district of Beijing. However, it was cancelled after police told Yue Luping , the managing curator and one of the artists, that some works were too politically sensitive.
In one of his works, titled Anaesthesia/Sensitive, Yue used Unicode, a computer language, to represent five sensitive phrases that are blocked by most mainland search engines: princelings, Tiananmen mothers, jasmine revolutions, Wang Dan and Radio Free Asia.
"These words were randomly picked among sensitive words and don't represent my political opinions," Yue said. "The work is meant to discuss the relationship between language used on the internet and in art.
"Artists should have the right of free expression. Otherwise there is no point in engaging in art." Police also deemed other works politically sensitive, such as two paintings by artist Zhao Baokang .
The paintings feature Lin Biao , one of the 10 generals who rose to prominence during the Cultural Revolution, but who later ran afoul of Mao Zedong .
A painting, by artist Jin Feng , featuring Adolf Hitler was also cited.
The other event that was cancelled was a solo exhibition featuring photos and oil paintings by Yu Jianrong , a rural expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The theme was "petition", and Yu announced its cancellation on his Weibo microblogging account.
The exhibit was to be part of the Songzhuang Arts Festival at the Dingshun Art Museum. The rest of the festival was unaffected.
"The museum said the situation this year is tense and no sensitive topics are allowed to proceed," Yu wrote. "I had no idea anything special had happened on the mainland or how it has anything to do with my paintings."
A number of cultural events were cancelled in May amid a general atmosphere in which government officials were jittery because of public discontent with rising inflation, the widening wealth gap, and persistent official corruption.
Online posts had appeared in February, urging weekend rallies across the mainland, similar to those that prompted the "jasmine revolutions" in Northern Africa and the Middle East.
Dozens of rights lawyers, activists and bloggers were detained as part of one of the largest crackdowns, which included the arrest and detention of internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei in April.
Events and gatherings to show solidarity with Ai were called off.
Yue was among those who had voiced his support for Ai during his detention. Yue said he did not know whether that was why his artworks were targeted. "It feels like a freezing cold winter right now," Yue said, referring to the political crackdowns on artistic freedom.
However, Yue said he believed that authorities had become more relaxed about controlling the arts in the past three decades, though they have tightened their control as the political climate changed.
"I am still cautiously optimistic about the future of art," Yue said.
prisicilla.jiao@scmp.com Copyright (c) 2011. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.