In Hong Kong, where the big Art Basel art festival is underway, a work was removed that contained some references to the names of political dissidents arrested for their protests against the Chinese government and in favor of democracy. The work, called “No Rioters”, was created by the American artist Patrick Amadon and was brought to the festival by the Milanese art gallery Art Innovation Gallery. It consisted of a huge luminous screen 70 meters long and 20 meters high, displayed on the side of a large shopping mall in the middle of a busy street in Hong Kong.
𝘕𝘖 𝘙𝘐𝘖𝘛𝘌𝘙𝘚, 2023 pic.twitter.com/iNxCgwRHF1
— Patrick Amadon (@patrickamadon) March 17, 2023
It reproduced a 24-second red and black video showing a surveillance camera moving left and right, interrupted by very short flashes showing pro-protest graffiti and the names of arrested political dissidents: the flashes and writings were practically invisible to the naked eye, but legible in the photographs taken at work.
(Patrick Amadon)
The work remained on display all last week: on Thursday Francesca Boffetti, founder of Art Innovation Gallery, said the owners of the building have asked to remove it. According to Amadon, the request would have come from the Hong Kong government itself as a form of censorship: there has been no confirmation, but the request would be consistent with other censorship acts by the Hong Kong government, which recently also included children’s books.
(Patrick Amadon)
The references contained in Amadon’s work were to the 47 democracy activists accused of “subversive conspiracy” for having organized some primary elections deemed illegal by the Chinese government: a major trial began against them last February.
Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China: until a few years ago it had enjoyed a certain margin of autonomy on numerous internal issues, but above all since 2019 the Chinese government has exercised greater control, thanks to the approval of a disputed security law national, which those 47 activists are accused of violating. Among other things, the law provides that anyone accused of acts of “sedition and subversion” such as pro-democracy protests can be arrested, gives the security forces very wide powers and has severely limited freedom of expression.
– Read also: There is no more democracy in Hong Kong