ARTS / CHINA: Chinese contemporary art pokes fun at communism

Poking fun at revered communist icons can be a very dangerous game in China these days. Beijing-based artist Zhao Jianhua was forced to withdraw more than twenty of his oil paintings of the late Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong--they were branded with the Nike swoosh. Authorities threatened to cancel the whole exhibition if he failed to remove them. The moment the art pieces made their debut in Beijing's famous 798 art district, police forced Zhao to lock them away in his studio on the eve of the 17th Communist Party Congress. This is nothing new to Zhao. In the past 20 years, his work has been ostracized by government authorities while exhibitions featuring his art have been raided or closed by police. "If they say there is a problem with my work, there is nothing I can do. I can only close my door and lock the paintings away. Locking my paintings away doesn't mean an end to creating though. It just gives the authorities time to grow up. Give them a year or two, three or four -- maybe five -- and they may be able to appreciate my works," Zhao said. Zhao was born in 1965, right before China's ten-year-culture revolution started. In 1988, the year before Beijing's 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on a pro-democracy movement, Zhao went to the U.S. for an exchange program. He refused to come back to China after the Tiananmen massacre happened. Zhao said when he first went to the U.S., he was very confused as he was exposed to a sea of logos coming from a communist country. That was why he made Mao with logos similar to Warhol's pop-art. "The speed of people opening up their minds can be compared to the speed of the economic growth in China. The changes in their thoughts are developed bit by bit, and cannot be calculated in say an increase of 20 percent this year, and 30 percent the next. It takes a whole generation to make this sort of change," said Zhao. Despite the current problems, and the perils of painting the nation's leaders, Zhao is planning a series on Chinese President Hu Jintao, currently championing his "harmonious society" doctrine at the Congress. At the same time, two other artists, Gao Qiang and his brother Gao Zhen attempted to poke fun by putting breasts on the late communist leader Mao Zedong. But, China's cultural guardians found no humour in the sculptures. The Gao brothers' "Miss Mao" series features life-sized, Pinocchio-nosed sculptures of China's most revered icon frozen in various poses, some quite unflattering. The brothers dismiss the accusations as baseless and say their intentions were purely artistic. "During the Cultural Revolution, we used to say that Mao was like the mother of China. So we decided to give them mothers' breasts," younger brother, Gao Qiang, said. In the run up to this weeks 17th Party Congress, when China's leadership approves policy and leadership changes, a puritanical campaign to suppress "vulgar" and "unhealthy" culture has seen TV shows cancelled, pornography Web sites shut down and more curiously, the banning of "sexual sounds" on local airwaves. The crackdown has also seen Gao Qiang and his brother Gao Zhen's studio-cum-gallery closed as authorities keep a close eye on their activities. "I don't know why this art should be banned. If you are relatively tolerant and can view it with a sense of humour, in reality it ought to be a relaxed issue, it shouldn't have any problems, and it should be able to be displayed. But these are never shown in China. Even when we try to get them shipped overseas for exhibitions, they were confiscated by customs," Gao Qiang said. Three decades of economic reforms in China may have emboldened local artists to test the boundaries of official tolerance and taste, but unsanctioned artwork of the Communist country's past and present leaders remain perilous territory. Last year, a local newspaper suspended Kuang Biao, a cartoonist, for a sympathetic portrait of President Hu Jintao weeping while writing a condolence letter to the daughter of a university professor who died from exhaustion due to overworking at age 48.

ITN Source | October 22, 2007

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