Art freedom under fire

The Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) is in hot water after it succumbed to pressure from the Chinese embassy by censoring an art exhibition on its premises.

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The exhibition “Constellation of Complicity: Visualising the Global Machinery of Authoritarian Solidarity”, comprises works by a group of artists, mostly in exile, from countries such as Myanmar, Iran, Russia, and Syria.

Through the exhibited artworks, the event was meant to explore the formal or informal alignments of authoritarian states.

The subsequent censorship of parts of the event, occurring after Chinese embassy staff visited the exhibition a few days after the official opening on July 24, is indeed an irony.

It is reported that on Aug 7, some works previously advertised and photographed had been removed, including a multimedia installation by a Tibetan artist, while other pieces had been altered, with the words “Hong Kong”, “Tibet” and “Uyghur” redacted, along with the names of the artists.