Chinese censorship rankles Thai art scene, Asia Nikkei

 

Partial silencing of Bangkok exhibition has amplified its impact

BANGKOK — At the opening of an art exhibition about networks of authoritarianism in late July, one of its makers was anticipating a strong reaction. “There’s a monumental level of risk to doing this kind of show,” said Sai, an artist, curator and human rights defender from Myanmar. What he was not anticipating was having to leave Thailand because of a strong reaction from one of the countries in the exhibition’s crosshairs.

Two days after the opening of “Constellation of Complicity: Visualizing the Global Machinery of Authoritarian Solidarity,” which is on show on the eighth floor of the Bangkok Art and Culture Center (BACC) until Oct. 19, Sai and his wife K were informed that Chinese Embassy officials had visited the exhibition and were not happy with its contents or its organizers. Wary of being sent back to Myanmar — where a civil war is underway and Sai’s father, a prominent politician from Shan state, is a political prisoner — the couple left Thailand for the U.K. immediately.

Presented by Myanmar Peace Museum, a curatorial initiative run by Sai and K, the show is one of the boldest, most sociopolitically charged shows in BACC history. Visitors can listen to protest songs that got Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi sent to prison; watch Uyghur diaspora artists perform poetic movements in filmmaker Mukaddas Mijit’s elegiac video; or, in a sound installation by Sai, listen to Myanmar exiles talking about their hopes for the future.

In another corner of the gallery, “Free Palestine” prayer flags are on display — a gesture of solidarity that would not be permitted in some Western museums, where curatorial censorship of pro-Palestine art is common. Meanwhile, an introductory wall text claims that these and other thought-provoking works perform a dual function: exposing interconnected regimes that oppress people “not only through violence, but through exchange,” and imagining “new forms of cross-border solidarity.”

Yet arguably its most contentious aspect is a series of thin strips of black tape that appeared on the walls shortly after the opening — an act of transnational censorship that has brought vividly to life the themes at its core.

 

The words “Hong Kong,” “Tibet” and “Uyghur diaspora,” along with the names of four artists from these regions and ethnic groups — Clara Cheung, Gum Cheng Yee Man, Tenzin Mingyur Paldron and Mijit — have been blacked out from wall texts and flyers. In addition, Uyghur and Tibetan flags have been removed from Paldron’s installation — a display of prayer flags festooned with the flags of repressed states or nations — along with books, postcards and videos that referred to China.
Transnational censorship of art deemed subversive by the Chinese Communist Party is nothing new. But for many observers of the Thai cultural sphere, this incident sets an alarming precedent.

“The BACC is one of the banner arts institutions in Thailand, and the fact that the local authorities would apparently take directions from a foreign government about what kind of art the Thai public can view is very concerning,” said Kathy Rowland, co-founder and head researcher of Southeast Asian Artistic Freedom RADAR, which has documented over 800 cases of art censorship in Southeast Asia since 2010.

According to the London-based Human Rights Foundation, officials from the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok made several visits to the gallery alongside local government officials in the days after the exhibition opened. Tense negotiations led to a compromise — the redactions and omissions that visitors to the art center encounter — and an official commentary from China’s Foreign Ministry.

 

In an Aug. 12 statement the ministry claimed that the exhibition “undermined China’s core interests and political dignity” by promoting “the fallacies of ‘Tibetan independence,’ ‘the East Turkestan Islamic Movement’ and ‘Hong Kong independence.'” Thai authorities, including the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority, which partially funds the BACC, have maintained a steadfast silence. The BMA did not respond to questions from Nikkei Asia.

Beyond the reputational damage to the BACC and to Thailand, the incident is potentially life-changing for Sai and K. Their decision to leave for the U.K., where they are seeking asylum, took place against a backdrop of forced repatriation in Thailand: 40 Uyghurs were sent back to China in February, despite warnings from human rights groups that they could face torture or death. The couple fears that the Thai government is equally capable of sending vocal political dissidents back to Myanmar.

In 2021, Sai submitted a complaint to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention about the arrest on charges of corruption of his father Linn Htut, a former chief minister of Myanmar’s Shan state and a member of the opposition National League for Democracy. The working group’s ruling, issued on June 12, called Htut’s sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment with labor a violation of international law, and called for his immediate release.

“My father’s case is emblematic, represents all arbitrary detention in Myanmar,” Sai said, speaking from London. “And the Myanmar military issued an official reply. So I’m at risk.”

 

Sai’s art also draws attention to the plight of Myanmar’s political prisoners and their families, including his own. His most widely exhibited series, “Trails of Absence,” comprises mixed-media photographs of his mother under house arrest in Taunggyi, the capital of Shan state. Widely exhibited around the world (including at the BACC in 2024), these poignant images were shot in his family’s colonial-era house, to which he briefly returned after taking part in anti-coup protests in Yangon in 2021.

More recently, Sai has produced similar photos with survivors of kidnapping, abduction, torture, arbitrary detention and extrajudicial killings in Myanmar, most now living along the Thai border. He has also published a tongue-in-cheek yet harrowing “Myanmar Junta’s Playbook” that links these human rights abuses to a global network of repression.

“Constellation of Complicity,” with its references to “a shared grammar of power,” is cut from similar cloth. Sai’s contributions to the show include “The Regimes that Hold Hands,” a 10-meter billboard in which grainy silhouettes of the leaders of the Myanmar junta’s allies, each with a hand outstretched as if ready to seal a deal, appear alongside blueprints of fighter jets, attack helicopters and heavy weapons being used in the civil war.

 

 

This collage is, on one level, an attempt to map a diplomatic world wherein the handshake often signals the sealing of arms deals, not peace. But a broader, overarching goal is fostering networks of resistance against it. “I think this work makes clear that all these oppressed communities shouldn’t be in their own respective bubbles or fights anymore,” Sai said. “We have a few Goliaths, so why don’t all the Davids join forces?”

In the long term, the BACC’s role as a safe space where art serves to articulate voices of the oppressed — particularly those from Myanmar — may now be in question. According to Rosalia Sciortino Sumaryono, the director of SEA Junction, a nonprofit foundation located on the fourth floor of the BACC building, the arts center “is a public space where you can have open discussion,” albeit within certain parameters. “There are topics in Thailand that we cannot touch,” she said earlier this year, alluding to strict laws forbidding criticism of the monarchy.

The CCP’s intervention in “Constellation of Complicity” may have caused that red line to shift — or clarified where it really lies. Sai said he hopes the incident will not cause art galleries or institutions in Thailand to disassociate themselves from artists or activists from Myanmar, or lead artists to self-censor in the future.

“If the cost of this is not being able to show my work in Thailand anymore, so be it,” he said. “But, going forwards, I don’t want it to have any impact on the Myanmar community, or culture as a whole.”

 

For now, the BACC remains the staging ground for a David vs. Goliath battle that appears to be taking place behind the scenes, as well as in the gallery. According to the Human Rights Foundation, Chinese Embassy officials initially demanded that the show be shut down. So while the BACC has come in for criticism in recent weeks, Sai said its team “deserves huge credit for fighting to keep it open regardless of external pressures.”

While dismayed by the censorship of the exhibition, Sai and K have also been buoyed by the reaction of the Thai public and art world. One artist, the Chiang Mai-based Thasnai Sethaseree, released a statement on his Facebook page calling the forced erasure of artist’s names and the disputed homelands they are exiled from “a dangerous overreach.” This anger was widespread, echoed in countless social media posts.

Others, such as Somrak Sila, a curator from Thailand who collaborated with exiled artists from Myanmar for the recent 13th Berlin Biennale, think Beijing’s censorship has been counterproductive.

“Rather than silencing the works, China’s intervention has exposed the very logic of foxing — art’s ability to navigate, resist and puncture unjust law — thereby reinforcing both the exhibition’s core message and the illegality it confronts,” she said. “It has also drawn more attention and visitors than the show would have otherwise.”

Max Crosbie-Jones is a contributing writer.

Source: https://asia.nikkei.com/life-arts/arts/chinese-censorship-rankles-thai-art-scene