An artist made scathing sculptures of Mao more than a decade ago. Now, he’s detained for slandering China’s heroes

Hong Kong (CNN) — A prominent Chinese artist known for his scathing political critiques of Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution has been detained in China, according to his brother and artistic partner.

Gao Zhen, 68, was detained last week in a police raid on his art studio on the outskirts of Beijing on suspicion of slandering China’s “heroes and martyrs,” his younger brother Gao Qiang told CNN Sunday in an email from New York. The criminal offense, introduced in 2021, is punishable by up to three years in prison.

The public security bureau that Gao Qiang said had detained his brother, in Hebei province’s Sanhe city, declined to comment.

At the height of their careers, the Gao Brothers created provocative sculptures of Mao in a country notoriously sensitive about its former ruler’s legacy. But that was well over a decade ago — during a relatively liberal era for artistic expression before China took an authoritarian turn under leader Xi Jinping.

Now, some of those older works have been seized by police as evidence against Gao Zhen, his brother said.

They include “Mao’s Guilt,” a life-size bronze cast created in 2009 that depicts the former Chinese Communist Party leader kneeling, hand on heart, in repentance; “The Execution of Christ,” created that same year, which features a firing squad of life-sized Chairman Maos pointing their bayoneted rifles at Jesus; and a collection of busts named “Miss Mao,” which come in various sizes and colors, sporting a Pinocchio-like nose and large, naked breasts.

The avant-garde artists’ latest works had not been as politically sensitive or explicitly critical of Chinese leaders, their friends say. Gao Zhen had lived a quiet life in China and spent most days in his studio prior to moving to the US, Du Yinghong, a fellow artist who has known the brothers for nearly two decades, told CNN in a phone call.

Due to the “deteriorating environment” in China, Gao Zhen relocated to New York two years ago when his son, an American citizen born in the US, reached school age, Gao Qiang said.

The artist returned to China in June with his wife and son to visit family. “Before he set off, his friends and family — myself included — had all reminded him to consider whether it was safe to go,” Gao Qiang said. “He himself also thought he might encounter problems, but still, as if driven by fate, he went back.”

At first, everything seemed fine. Gao Zhen kept in touch during his trip and regularly posted on the Chinese social messaging app WeChat. In July, he organized a birthday party for his son who had turned 6 years old.

But on August 26, just over a week before the family was scheduled to fly back to the US, about 30 police raided the Gao Brothers’ studio in Yanjiao, a town on the border of Beijing and neighboring Hebei province, to “search for evidence,” Gao Qiang said.

Police demanded the artist hand over his phone. Gao Zhen refused and was forcibly handcuffed and taken away, according to his brother.

Gao Zhen’s wife received his detention notice the following day from the public security bureau in Sanhe, Gao Qiang said, adding that she had been warned by police not to speak to the media about her husband’s detention.

The police returned to the studio on August 27 to search for more evidence, according to Gao Qiang.

“A few days before his arrest, Gao Zhen told me that he was organizing his Yanjiao studio and had destroyed some unfinished sculptures in stock, including those of ‘Miss Mao,’” Gao Qiang said in an email.

“He is nearly 70 years old and naturally prone to melancholy. I am very concerned about his physical and mental health.”

‘Retroactive punishment’

Under Xi, the ruling Communist Party has vowed to eradicate “historical nihilism” — or any views that question or challenge its official version of history, including glorified images of sanctified national heroes.

China passed a law in 2018 banning any insult or slander of national “heroes and martyrs,” including military personnel. The offense was added to the country’s criminal code three years later.

Since then, the law has been used to jail a popular blogger who doubted the official death toll of Chinese soldiers in a border clash with India, and a former investigative journalist who questioned China’s role in the Korean War, as depicted in a patriotic movie.

And last year, a stand-up comedian was investigated by police for the same offense after making a joke that referenced a military slogan at a show in Beijing. It cost him his job and his employer more than $2 million in fines, though police later dropped the case and did not press charges.

Around that time, another Chinese contemporary artist, Yue Minjun, faced the wrath of online nationalists for “uglifying” and “insulting” China’s military with his iconic grinning self-portraits, but the authorities did not act on those accusations.

That makes Gao Zhen the first Chinese artist known to be detained under the law.

His brother and friends wonder why authorities appear to be targeting the Gaos’ works retroactively, as they were created many years before the law came into force.

“The artworks collected as evidence by the police were all created more than a decade ago as part of an artistic reflection on Mao’s Cultural Revolution,” Gao Qiang said. “Imposing retroactive punishment for actions taken before the new law took effect goes against the widely accepted legal principle of non-retroactivity.”

The Gaos hail from a generation of Chinese artists who pushed the boundaries of creative expression by offering an unflinching glimpse into the dark chapters of their country’s past.

The upheaval of the Cultural Revolution, which roiled China in the 1960s and 1970s, inflicted indelible pain on the Gao family.

The brothers were just 6 and 12 years old when their father, a factory worker, was labeled a class enemy and thrown into detention at the height of the decade-long turmoil. Twenty-five days later, the family of six brothers was told that their father committed suicide “out of guilt for being a counter-revolutionary,” but they believed he was persecuted and killed.

“Our father’s death was a devastating disaster for our family.” Gao Zhen told the Southern People Weekly, a once-outspoken news outlet, in 2010. “We constantly worried that our mother would take her own life, but she raised us with an extraordinary resilience that few could compare to.” After the Cultural Revolution ended, Gao Zhen took the train to Beijing to petition his father’s death. The family was eventually given about 3,000 yuan (then equivalent to about $2,000) in compensation, the Gao brothers wrote in an article in 2004.

‘There’s no logic’

Friends who know the Gao Brothers say they used art to express their grief, with Mao being a recurring feature of their work in the late 1990s and 2000s.

“It was really an artistic phase; it’s not all their work. But this is why people remember them, because it was a very political, very direct critique,” said a friend who has known the brothers for over two decades.

In recent years, the brothers created works featuring world leaders including Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, as well as pieces showing support for Ukraine, according to the friend, who requested anonymity over safety concerns.

“There’s no logic to arrest (Gao Zhen) now,” she said. “They were not the only ones; many Chinese artists of that generation made very critical art back then… I guess they will be afraid now.”

Even during China’s more liberal years, however, the brothers had several run-ins with authorities over their controversial artworks. Police shut down their exhibitions, confiscated their politically sensitive works, and even intimidated visitors by stationing guards outside their old studio in Beijing’s 798 art district.

“But after we promised that our studio would not be open for public display, we hadn’t run into major problems,” Gao Qiang said.

The duo went on to attract international acclaim. They held exhibitions in Paris, New York, Moscow and Berlin, with some of their works collected by prestigious museums, from the Centre Pompidou in Paris to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The two brothers obtained permanent residency in the US in 2011 and traveled frequently between Beijing and New York. Gao Qiang moved to the US a few years before his brother and has not returned to China since.

Two years ago, their Beijing studio was forced to shut down, and Gao Zhen moved his studio to Yanjiao, about 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) away, his brother said.

Gao Zhen’s detention shows that freedom of expression in China has shrunk significantly compared to a decade ago, Gao Qiang said.

“A healthy society should move towards the broadening of thoughts and actions, instead of the other way around,” he added.

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