Christian Artist Languishes In Chinese Prison, Friends Rally For His Release
A 70-year-old artist is facing another day apart from his family and without necessary medical care after almost two years in a Chinese prison, his friends and advocates said.
Gao Zhen, a Christian and part of the famous artistic duo called the Gao brothers, was detained in mid-2024 for “slandering heroes and martyrs,” according to the International Federation for Human Rights. His friends and advocates say he was really detained for his sculptures that critique the country’s authoritarianism, censorship and the Chinese government’s darker chapters of history.
Gao Zhen, along with his younger brother, Gao Qiang, created work that spanned artistic mediums, but are best known for their contemporary bronze and chrome sculptures and their public performance art.
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“Some of their work can be tongue-in-cheek and critical, especially when they are talking about political leaders who suppress freedom of speech and education,” Joyce Yu-Jean Lee, a fellow artist and friend of the brothers, told Religion Unplugged.
The brothers are Christians and their faith and political views mingle in several works, including a life-size sculpture called “The Execution of Christ,” depicting a group of figures that look like China’s former dictator Mao Zedong pointing their guns at Jesus, Lee said.
Another sculpture shows Zedong kneeling, with his hand over his heart, asking for forgiveness for his misdeeds. Zedong founded the People’s Republic of China and was the architect of the Great Leap Forward, which caused widespread famine and death of an estimated 30 million people.
The brothers’ work is “colored by their Christian faith, themes about loving their enemies,” Lee said.
Other works poke fun at Zedong’s wife. The brothers created a series of busts called “Miss Mao” that depict her with an oversized nose, breasts and distinctly characterized face.
Lee said the work that left the deepest impression on her was their performance art. Over a decade, the brothers organized a series of meetings where complete strangers hugged one another for 20 minutes. Lee participated in one performance in Oslo, Norway.
“Everyone was just assigned a stranger, and you had to hug them. Hundreds of onlookers would just come and watch,” she said. “I became friends with the person I was assigned to hug. It really makes you recognize a stranger’s humanity.”
“The Utopia of The 20 Minute Embrace”, one of the Gao brothers’ performance art pieces. (Source: WikiMedia)
Gao Zhen was detained in August 2024, according to Claudia Bennett, a legal & program officer with the Human Rights Foundation. Bennett said his health has been in decline and his wife has been barred from delivering him medication.
In recent months, Gao Zhen has also been prevented from communicating with his wife and 8-year-old son, who are under house arrest in China, owning a Bible and practicing his Christian faith and communicating regularly with his lawyer.
His first trial occurred almost two years after his arrest, this past May, and advocates expect him to face another trial where he will receive his formal sentence by the fall. He faces a potential sentence of three years in prison, but it is unclear if his two years of pre-trial detention will count toward his total sentencing.
The law forbidding the “slandering of humans and martyrs” was not formalized in the Chinese legal system until 2019, and the criminal penalty was added in 2021. However, Bennett said, the artistic pieces that were targeted in the case were all created in 2009 and 2010 — well before the law was in place.
Gao Zhen is a legal permanent resident of the United States, with a residence in New York. He was arrested when he returned to China to visit extended family with his wife and his son, who is also an American citizen.
Notably, the art in question is in the United States and is mostly owned by private collectors, according to Bennet, who called his arrest and detention “transnational repression.”
“China is just very good at creating crafty laws,” Bennett told Religion Unplugged, adding that, to her knowledge, Gao Zhen has been the only artist charged under that “heroes and martyrs” law. “All of a sudden they are going after an artist who stopped making art a decade ago.”
His younger brother and co-artist, Gao Qiang, lives in the United States and spends much of his time partnering with friends and advocates like Lee and Bennet to free his brother.
Pastor Ezra Jin, who was detained in China for more than 250 days for running an unauthorized church, was released earlier this summer and reunited with his family in Los Angeles, following talks between President Donald Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping.
Jin’s release has raised the hopes of Gao Zhen’s international supporters, who want to see him and his family safe and sound in the United States, too.
Cassidy Grom is the managing editor of Religion Unplugged. Her award-winning reporting and digital design work have appeared in numerous publications.