Censure
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Gao Zhen, the eldest of the Gao brothers, known for their works and their critical positions of the regime and Maoism, was arrested on Tuesday August 26 after a search of his workshop for the crime of “attacking the reputation and honor of heroes and martyrs.”
The Gao brothers’ works depicting Mao Zedong may date back almost fifteen years, but that didn’t stop Chinese authorities from arresting the eldest of the duo, Gao Zhen, this week for the crime of“attack on the reputation and honor of heroes and martyrs.” While in China with his wife and child to visit his family, the 68-year-old artist was handcuffed and taken away on Tuesday August 26 after a search by a “thirty agents”according to his younger brother Gao Qiang, in his studio in Yanjiao, a city located forty minutes from Beijing. The precise reason for the detention was not notified, but the police took pictures and seized some of the duo’s old works, in particular those “representing Mao”, notes Gao Qiang, contacted by email, who says “exhausted” et “depressed to the point of losing the power of speech.” The news, made public by Gao Qiang on social media this Saturday, has led to the mobilization of his relatives and the community of Chinese artists in exile.
Detachable head
Gao Zhen is the eldest of the Gao brothers, leading figures of committed contemporary Chinese art in the 90s and 2000s. Visual artists, writers, photographers and performers, the two artists have never minced their criticisms of the excesses of the regime, with particular attention to the figure of Mao. A «obsession», according to Florent Villard (author of a work on the two brothers published in
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