Dark, bare photos of modern Chinese society by Liu Xia (劉霞), detained wife of China’s best known dissident, went on show in New York without her knowledge after they were spirited out of her country.
The photos were brought out of China under the noses of the authorities by French academic, writer and economist Guy Sorman, a friend of the artist and her Nobel Peace Prize-winning husband, Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波).
Liu Xia, who is under house arrest in Beijing, while her husband serves an 11-year jail term for propagating democracy, made it a condition of the deal that the exhibitions were kept a secret from her, Sorman said.
“She does not know. She does not want to know,” Sorman said ahead of the opening on Thursday of the exhibition he curated. “She gave me permission to show them, but she did not want to know where or when. As she is a woman who would never lie, if she is questioned by police she can say that she does not know and she really doesn’t know.”
The 25 photos in “The Silent Strength of Liu Xia” will be displayed at Columbia University in New York until March 1 before going to Madrid and what could be a politically charged exhibition in Hong Kong later in the year.
They were shown at Boulogne-Billancourt, just outside of Paris, last year.
Sorman has known the Liu family for 15 years, but only convinced Liu Xia to display her work just before she was put under house arrest in 2010.
Convincing her was more difficult than getting the images — in which dolls are used to show the suffering of the Chinese people — out of the country, Sorman said.
“It was a bit complicated, I am not going to say how. I would just say that it was not illegal,” he said.
Though Liu Xia has been restricted to her home for more than a year, she has never been charged with any illegal act.
“When the exhibition was held in France, the Chinese ambassador protested — half-heartedly because he knew he had no grounds to protest,” Sorman said.
Sorman, who now communicates only with the artist’s mother, said the photos were taken out of China individually.
“It took me several months to persuade a number of people. Each one carried one photo. If we had taken them out together it would probably have been difficult. The whole thing took a year,” he said.
Liu Xia could never stage an exhibition in China because she is the wife of the country’s best-known dissident. Sorman insists, however, that she is not involved in political activities.
“Artists are always dissidents,” Sorman said. “But Liu Xia is an artist and I am presenting her here as an artist.”
The French academic stresses that the world is now discovering an “important” Chinese artist.
“This is no an anti-Chinese exhibition. On the contrary, this shows that there is a renaissance of Chinese culture, following modern forms of expression. This is not folk art,” he said.
The black and white images show dolls in different positions in the Liu family’s apartment in Beijing — one shows a pained Liu Xiaobo holding a doll on his shoulder. Another doll is tied up and another is wrapped in plastic.
Many show tears. All present a grim outlook.
“They represent an aspect of Chinese society, which we don’t speak a lot about. The Chinese propaganda machine always shows a celebration of Chinese successes,” Sorman said.
“So there are two messages: one, that there is a cultural renaissance, but secondly, the suffocating society. A society which cannot breathe,” he added.
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS