Gao Zhen, the Chinese artist who has been detained for more than 400 days after criticizing Mao

At dawn on August 26, 2024, artist Gao Zhen realized that there was no electricity in his house. A short time later, an acquaintance alerted his wife that he had seen a lot of police in the area. Something strange was afoot. The couple and their son, residents of New York, were on a visit to China. Gao — one of the Gao brothers, an artist duo known for their satiric works about the Chinese Cultural Revolution — and his wife, Yaliang Zhao, had been warned by friends that they were running a risk by traveling to their birth country. But Yaliang’s mother was going to have cancer-related surgery and, they reasoned, they’d only be there for a short amount of time. They were staying in the brothers’ studio in a brick building in the Sanhe district, in Hebei province near Beijing. It was there that the lights stopped working that morning. After making a call, they got an electrician to come look at it. When the technician entered the studio, some 30 police officers followed. They were there for Gao.

The 69-year-old artist was brought to the Sanhe jail. He is accused of “insulting, defaming and infringing,” through his art, “the reputation and honor of heroes and martyrs,” a crime that can be punished with up to three years in prison. The other half of the Gao Brothers, his sibling Gao Qiang, who lives in the United States, announced his detention soon after. The date for his trial has still not been set, though a lawyer has explained to the family that it could take place after next week’s plenary session of the Community Party, one of the major dates on China’s political calendar.

Sitting in a cafe in Beijing’s 798 Art District, 47-year-old Yaliang says, “Art is not a crime.” She is diminutive, has short hair, and a shadow falls over her face every so often. She is also an artist, and a writer. “We want him to get out earlier,” she continues. Neither she nor their son have seen Gao since he was detained more than 400 days ago. She is not being allowed to leave China, despite the fact that her child, who was born in the United States, has a U.S. passport. The boy runs around the room while his mother elaborates on his father’s case. He was there when they took his dad away. He didn’t see it, but he could hear what was happening from the kitchen.

Gao’s detention is linked to three very specific sculptures about the legendary founder of the People’s Republic, Mao Zedong. One entitled Execution of Christ represents a firing squad of seven Maos who are preparing to shoot Jesus. Another, Miss Mao, is a Pop Art bust of the Communist leader with a Pinocchio nose, his tongue sticking out and women’s breasts. The third, Mao’s Guilt, shows the leader kneeling before the portraits of the Gao brothers’ parents.

The three works, created years ago, touch on the central theme to which the artists have dedicated their lives. It was during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), a decade of chaos and purging that left, according to expert calculations, around two million dead. Gao Zhen saw his father arrested, just like his son many years later. Gao’s father died in prison.

“History seems to repeat itself,” say Yaliang in a letter that she recently sent to the U.S. ambassador in China asking for help. In the missive, she underlines the fact that Gao’s detention took place retroactively, under accusations related to pieces created years ago. It represents “the definitive end of human rights and the state of law in China,” she writes.

After the death of Mao and the opening of China’s borders, artistic movements dedicated to revisiting that traumatic period arose. In the 2000s, this kind of work became known worldwide and was highly valued. It even became cliché. The Gao brothers thrived in this environment. They organized clandestine exhibitions that could only be attended by invitation, and used guerrilla tactics in their work. The sculpture of Mao kneeling, for example, originally featured the “Great Helmsman” decapitated. His body was one piece, his head another, and the two were only connected for the exhibition. This led to problems. Some of the brothers’ exhibitions were shut down, though neither had ever been arrested.

That changed in 2021. “It became a crime,” says Yaliang. That year, China approved a change to its penal code that punished defamation of heroes and martyrs with up to three years in prison. As early as 2018, a law had been passed protecting these historic figures, though it carried with it no criminal penalties. Safeguarding a “correct view of history” has become one of Beijing’s obsessions since Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2012. The leader sees “historic nihilism” as one of the great threats that felled the Soviet Union.

The new law has been rigorously enforced, with state authorities encouraging citizens to report violations. One of the government’s objectives has been to curb social media, and journalists and influencers have been convicted. The net has also tightened around art. “Now, everything has changed,” says a poet and writer, a friend of Yaliang’s, who is accompanying her in the café on this autumn afternoon and does not give her name out of fear of reprisal. “Contemporary art is dead. Artists just want to live. It’s risky to make art,” the friend says. “Artists and writers feel hopeless.”

The café is located in district 798, an area that serves as proof of that defeat. The former semi-abandoned industrial area was a creative hotbed where the most transgressive artists of their generation came to live, like Ai Weiwei, who left China in 2015 after his own incarceration. The Gao brothers were likewise advised to relocate. Gao Zhen has had a U.S. green card since 2011, and has lived for years between the United States and China. His brother and artistic partner also lives in New York. Yaliang and their son had moved there a year and a half ago. They lived in a house with a garden on Long Island.

Since that era, the 798 has morphed into a neighborhood of commercial art, to which one comes to see a state-approved exhibition, go shopping for modern clothes, enjoy an ice cream, and go home, without getting into any trouble.

“That’s where we had the studio,” says Yaliang, gazing through the window. Later, her husband would rent the place where the interview is taking place. It was an old two-story house flanked by a poplar tree which they converted into a glass-enclosed café. The tree stayed put, and now rises up through an addition to the building, providing pleasant shade on the roof. The establishment is now run by the artist’s twin brother, Gao Zong, who can often be found sitting near a window next to a caged gray magpie named Xique.

With Gao in prison, the family decided to share the ground floor of the café to save money. Now it houses a location of Mixue Bingcheng, a major Chinese chain that serves bubble tea.

That twin brother is also present during the interview. He wears a hat similar to that of his sibling, and the two do indeed look alike. Every once in a while, he augments the conversation with a photo on his phone, like one of the deceased Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, grabbing Miss Mao’s Pinocchio nose. Sometimes, he shuffles through books to find one of his brothers’ works. The day Gao was detained, the police also came to the café. They interrogated Zong and took photos. They went through his phones. They asked him about a photo of Ai Weiwei on his computer. They didn’t confiscate anything.

From the studio, they took some hundred pieces, in addition to books, computers and hard drives. Yaliang says that they had to use five trucks to take everything away. They also shut down the studio, and have not given them back the key. Now, Yaliang lives in a nearby apartment with her son, who has enrolled at a local school. The boy continues to dash around the café. He and a friend are entertaining themselves by striking the bird’s cage.

She hasn’t told him the whole truth: Yaliang said that his father was working with the police. To prove it, she showed him the art that Gao has been able to make in prison. They are pieces crafted on paper in the style of Chinese paper-cutting art. Gao creates them by tearing small pieces of paper by hand, as he is not allowed to have anything sharp. Yaliang shows one that depicts the artist wearing a hat and sunglasses with his hands on his son’s head. Another, rendered in black, is her, with tears in her eyes.

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