24 Sep 2014 | News, Religion and Culture, United Kingdom
Exhibit B will take place at the Barbican Sept 23-27, 2014. (Photo: © Sofie Knijff / Barbican)
Update: Exhibit B was cancelled by the Barbican, the Evening Standard reported, after protesters blockaded the entrance and branded it ‘racist’.
If artistic culture is to be truly dynamic, strong, representative and relevant, the programmes in our theatres, galleries and museums will necessarily be challenging. The work, presented by many different voices, will likely be divisive; and causing offence, whether unintended or deliberate, is unavoidable.
The role of the arts institution in this dynamic cultural life is to manage the space between the artist and the audience, to create a place in which different ideas about the world we live in can be expressed, challenged, exalted, ridiculed and celebrated.
Brett Bailey’s Exhibit B, programmed for four days at the Barbican beginning tomorrow, has certainly caused considerable offence; 22,500 people have signed a petition calling for the Barbican to withdraw this exhibition, declaring their intention to protest outside the venue during the run.
The work by the South African theatre maker was inspired by human zoos, popular in 18th and 19th centuries, where human beings of African heritage were put in cages on display alongside animals for the titillation of European audiences. It recreates 12 tableaux of atrocities featuring live actors, who the audience is asked to observe in silence. Brett Bailey’s idea behind Exhibit B is to immerse the visitor in visions of horror and inhumanity to “provoke audiences to reflect on the historical roots of today’s prejudices and policies”.
What interests me here is the role and mindset of the institution presenting this piece of work and whether it considered, if at all, the possibility of a hostile response. I requested an interview with the Barbican, but was told they would speak after the show, once I had seen the exhibition.
For Exhibit B to be anything other than another here-today-gone-tomorrow exhibition that takes the messages of the work to heart, the Barbican would have to be engaged in dialogue with black artists and audiences as part of an ongoing commitment to eradicate institutional racism from the arts. Yet it is the boycott organised against this exhibition, with its petition, speeches, protests, marches, public meetings, pickets, on and offline debate that is ensuring that any dialogue is happening, albeit in reaction to the programming of Exhibit B, and from the outside.
In response to the boycott, Barbican commissioned Nitro to organise a public debate: Discussions, Learning and Legacy at Theatre Royal Stratford East Monday 22nd.
The panel for the passionate and heated debate about Exhibit B, excellently chaired by Olu Alake, featured six speakers – three supporting the boycott, including Sara Myers author of the Petition and three supporting the work including Louise Jeffries from the Barbican who programmed the work. After each speaker had had their say, the audience of around 150 people, unleashed a barrage of questions from the floor. The two hours allotted to the debate were woefully inadequate for the range and depth of opinion expressed. As anticipated the debate changed nothing in the short term, the work will open this evening as planned, but there was an urgent call for a longer, fuller discussion which hopefully Barbican will respond to as a matter of urgency.
By giving a major international platform to Exhibit B without significant contemporary context, engagement or dialogue, the Barbican is unwittingly shining a light on both its own failure and the failure of the wider arts and culture scene to challenge prejudice and policy in the arts in the United Kingdom. Surely it cannot be possible for the Barbican to stand by a work that purports to confront “colonial atrocities committed in Africa, European notions of racial supremacy and the plight of immigrants today” and not see that it is holding up a mirror to itself.
Mark Sealy, artistic director at Autograph Black Photographers, who I spoke to last week about the boycott, was unequivocal: “Since 1980s it is progress zero. Our institutions have failed to bring about change – whether it is academia, the McPhearson Report or funding policies – [black] people feel absented from power, authoring and having a voice” And the reason? “There are no consequences to this failure. These policies have not made an iota of difference. If they want their institutions to be truly diverse they would withdraw the money from institutions if they don’t deliver.”
Independent arts consultant Jenny Williams takes a pragmatic view by heading up the campaign JustCulture, featuring a 10-point manifesto for change, though she knows, also from years of experience, without investment and commitment from the establishment there is little hope that things will change. She has crunched the numbers: “The Arts Council funding of arts infrastructure is not fairly representing the 14% black and minority communities. 14% of ACE’s overall three-year investment of £2.4bn would equate to £336m – that’s £112m per year. The black and minority ethnic community contribute around £62m per year into the overall arts budget. Yet, the current yearly figure currently invested in black and minority ethnic-led work is £4.8m.”
In spite of this grossly unbalanced situation, the organisers of the boycott I have spoken to are talking about how they can turn this into a positive. As Sara Myers, author of the boycott told me, she sees the mass outpouring of frustration and outrage as a catalyst. “A door has opened and we want to take the opportunity to challenge stereotypes, rather than sit back and see them reinforced.” She was however shocked when she met the board and senior management of the Barbican – with one exception, all white.
In her five-star review of Exhibit B for The Guardian, Lyn Gardner says the show “reminds us that most history is hidden from view”. I would say history here is on display for all to see. I defend Brett Bailey’s right to present these horrendous atrocities from the past – anything else is censorship – and agree with Lemn Sissay that we should all be free to revisit this story “in every part of every generation”.
But the more potent issue here, is the perpetuation of institutionalised mono-cultural bias preventing the Barbican, and the vast majority of British arts institutions, from fostering and delivering a truly relevant cultural programme. This untenable form of censorship must be addressed and continue to be addressed long after Exhibit B has been and gone.
This article was posted on 22 September 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
7 Nov 2025 | Asia and Pacific, Burma, China, News, Volume 54.03 Autumn 2025
If you had told Sai a month ago that his latest exhibition would force him to flee across the world, he might not have been surprised.
After spending hundreds of days hiding above an interrogation centre in his home country of Myanmar, sneaking cameras illegally through military checkpoints and risking his life raising awareness about the horrors of the junta through art, he seems immune to shock.
He told Index that to get out of the country and come to Thailand in 2021, he had to “imagine himself dead”.
This experience influenced his work as an artist and curator who has become renowned for his powerful works about the trauma of political persecution and Myanmar’s military coup.
His latest Bangkok show, co-curated with his wife, is Constellation of Complicity: Visualising the Global Machine of Authoritarian Solidarity. It links his experiences with artists from around the world in a powerful exploration of how authoritarian regimes collude internationally in systems of repression. But for some, its message struck too close to home.
It opened at the end of July at the Bangkok Arts and Cultural Centre (BACC), where Sai and his wife had settled in exile. But shortly after it opened, he says that Chinese embassy officials arrived with Thai authorities and demanded that it be shut down.
A display showing artist names which were redacted after complaints from Chinese embassy officials in Thailand. Photo: Pran Limchuenjai
A compromise was reached, but what followed was a wave of censorship that stripped the audacious exhibition of artists’ names, politically sensitive references and some of its bravest works.
The names of Uyghur artist Mukaddas Mijit, Tibetan artist Tenzin Mingyur Paldron and Hong Kong artist duo Clara Cheung and Gum Cheng Yee Man were all blacked out and their works pared down or removed entirely.
Tenzin Mingyur Paldron was the most heavily censored, with the televisions screening his video installations about the Dalai Lama and LGBTQ+ Tibetans switched off.
Tibetan and Uyghur flags were removed and a description of the censored artists’ homelands was concealed with black paint. An illustrated postcard comparing China’s treatment of Muslim populations to Israel’s was also taken down.
Sai, who goes by a single name to protect his identity after repeated warnings that he is being sought by the junta, is no stranger to state power.
His father, the former chief minister of Myanmar’s biggest state, was abducted and jailed on falsified charges after the 2021 coup. His mother lives under 24-hour surveillance, constantly fearing for her safety.
This experience has shaped both his politics and his practice. “My works usually combine social experiment with institutional critique,” he explained. “But since 2021, it has mostly been reflective of my lived experience.”
This inspired the most recent exhibition, which brings together exiled Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Burmese, Tibetan, Uyghur and Hong Kong artists. It’s a snapshot of life under repression, mapping the contours of a global authoritarian network.
“We formulated what would happen if all of the oppressed united together against the few [oppressors],” Sai explained about his defiant stance which quickly stoked retaliation.
“We were very used to absurdity, with what happened to my father, my country, my loved ones. But this was another international-level absurdity happening – the absurdity of transnational repression.”
Thailand, which Sai had once seen as a place of refuge where a large community of pro-democracy artists and dissidents from Myanmar could work with relative freedom suddenly felt perilously unsafe.
“Thailand has long tried to balance being a host for dissidents with keeping strong relations with China,” he said. “The intervention by the CCP, and Thailand’s willingness to comply with it, shows just how fragile that space really was.”
After being informed that police were looking for them, Sai and his wife booked flights out of the country. They fled within hours and are now seeking asylum in the UK.
But he is sympathetic towards the BACC. It is funded by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, and he said it decided to censor the show due to its “connection to city authorities and the political sensitivities such as threats to diplomatic relations between Thailand and China”.
“They were under immense pressure and chose partial censorship as a way of protecting the institution,” he concluded.
However, the irony was almost too much to bear as the Chinese response handed the exhibition, which might otherwise not have been noticed, a global platform. The artists who had their names blocked out have gone viral, reaching new heights of fame. Visitors have flocked to the exhibition, while the gallery has faced uproar for its decision to bow to censorship.
Sai also says it also taught him a valuable lesson. “When we got out [of Myanmar] we promised that we would make something for our country. Now we’ve learned something – we can’t just do it for our own country, because all of these geographical boundaries are just constructs. We live in one world, and we need to fight against global repression together.”
12 Jul 2024 | Europe and Central Asia, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News, Russia, United Kingdom
A Russian art collective which was due to open a show in London highlighting the plight of opponents of the Putin regime claim their exhibition was cancelled at the last minute because one of them was Israeli.
The Pomidor group was founded in Moscow in 2018 by the artists Polina Egorushkina and Maria Sarkisyants, but the duo was forced to relocate two years ago after the Kremlin crackdown on opposition activity. Egorushkina now lives in London and Sarkisyants in Ashkelon in southern Israel.
Their latest show, Even Elephants Hold Elections, was part of an ongoing project about free expression designed to challenge people in democratic countries to understand life in an authoritarian regime and reflect on their own experience. Pomidor’s work includes embroidered banners celebrating political prisoners which the artists display in friends’ windows and phone booths on the street.
Among these are tributes to Viktoria Petrova, imprisoned in a psychiatric unit for anti-war social media posts, Mikhail Simonov, a 63-year-old pensioner arrested for comments on other people’s social media and 13-year-old Masha Moskaleva, who was taken away from her father after drawing anti-war pictures at school.
The show was due to open on 3 July at the Metamorphika Gallery in east London. But on the evening before, the two artists were told the gallery had received messages raising concerns about “inappropriate behaviour” on social media.
This referred to two posts pinned on Maria’s Instagram account. One post from 7 October expressed her horror at the “terrible evil” and included the words, in Russian, “Israel my beloved, we are here, we are here to support each other, all my thoughts are with the kidnapped, let only them return home alive. Eternal memory to the fallen.” A second post marked the one-month anniversary and expressed solidarity with the Israeli hostages and their families.
Sarkisyants told Index they were called to an urgent meeting the next day: “They showed me the two posts and said you should clarify your position. I said, I am from Israel and there was nothing in the post but facts: 1200 people were killed and 300 became hostages.”
The gallery asked Pomidor to sign a joint statement with Metamorphika condemning “the Zionist regime”, which they refused to do. “I’m Israeli. I was there,” said Sarkisyants. “What they proposed was impossible for me to do”
After several hours of discussion, Pomidor suggested a compromise of putting the exhibition solely in the name of Polina, but the gallery demanded the collective remove all work connected with Maria. At this point the exhibition was cancelled.
Pomidor posted on Instagram: “The problem came up because Maria is from Israel.”
This is something the gallery strongly denies. Metamorphika founder Simon Ballester told Index: “We were really compassionate with her story. But we asked her to say she had empathy for Palestinians and was against the war crimes.”
Ballester said the problem came when Sarkisyants expressed her support for the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza.
“It’s outrageous” the artist told Index. “I told them I do not support Netanyahu or his government. I feel they betrayed us. We expected them to protect us, but they didn’t. But I support my country Israel and its people.”
Since the cancellation of the show, Metamorphika claims it has received over a thousand “hate mails, insults and threats”. According to Ballester, he and his colleagues have been accused of being “Nazis, rapists, antisemites and misogynistic scumbags”.
Asked if he now regretted cancelling the show he said: “I think it was the right thing. I’m sorry it was the day of the show. That was really unfortunate.” He said the gallery operated on humanist principles and was striving for peace and equality.
The Pomidor exhibition will next travel to Montreal in Canada and the artists are in discussion with a gallery in London to host the show later in the year.
30 Jun 2023 | China, News
A packed-out audience gathered at St John’s Church in Waterloo, London on Tuesday to see and hear an extraordinary night of talk, music and art aimed at showing how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reaches beyond its borders to repress freedom of expression around the world.
Badiucao, the political cartoonist, artist and human rights activist who is a target of the CCP, was the main speaker and detailed how the CCP attempts to suppress his work abroad and the lengths they will go to.
Known as the Chinese Banksy, Badiucao was born into an artistic family in 1986. He explained he was told by his father at a young age that to be an artist in China is dangerous, and he would have to leave the country to pursue his career. He left in 2009.
‘Tell China’s Story Well’, by Badiucao
“I didn’t want to be silenced and devalued by this terrible regime, and the way to go forward was to make art they don’t believe in,” he said.
However, in 2018 an exhibition of his work in Hong Kong was cancelled by organisers after threats made by the Chinese authorities. After this, he also felt there was a lack of interest to show his work in Australia but blamed a strategy of the CCP for this.
“The Chinese government are very good at playing mind games”, he said. “They will use a tactic of accusing people and countries of being racist, of simply being anti-Chinese.”
Fresh from his exhibition in Warsaw in June, Badiucao said the pressure from China not to exhibit his work in Europe has so far been successfully fought against, but the pressure has been ramped up. He explained that in Warsaw, when the exhibition was announced, the Chinese Embassy visited the museum and demanded its cancellation.
Banned By Beijing exhibition
“Wherever I take this exhibition, they follow me,” he said. “It’s a warning to anybody wanting to host my show, that you must handle the pressure you’ll get. However, what the CCP is doing is raising the bar for my future work.”
Baudicau feels that as a dissident abroad his work means the CCP will eventually catch up with him. He said: “To me it’s no longer a yes or no. It’s just a case of when. But the more people join [protest the CCP], we can all share this big burden together.”
Music was provided by the London Silk Road Collective, who performed the diverse music traditions found along the ancient Silk Road route, connecting Europe, Central Asia and South East Asia, with a particular focus on songs (both melancholy and hopeful) from the Uyghur region. Its singer, Uyghur campaigner Rahima Mahmut, spoke about the personal effects of being a dissident abroad when she explained the anguish of her sister recently dying in China but being unable to contact her family due to the CCP.
The event also marked the opening of the Banned by Beijing art exhibition, aimed at highlighting transnational repression from China. Badiucao’s artwork featured, as well as works from husband-and-wife painting duo Lumli Lumlong and cartoonist and former secondary school visual arts teacher Vawongsir. The exhibition will run in the crypt of St John’s Church, Waterloo until 10 July 2023.
