{"id":150342,"date":"2023-03-24T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-24T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mediaintel.asia\/?p=915635"},"modified":"2023-03-24T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-03-24T00:00:00","slug":"artwork-paying-secret-tribute-to-protesters-removed-in-hong-kong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/2023\/03\/24\/artwork-paying-secret-tribute-to-protesters-removed-in-hong-kong\/","title":{"rendered":"Artwork paying secret tribute to protesters removed in Hong Kong"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MediaIntel.Asia\"<\/a><\/div>\n

HONG KONG \u2014 An American artist says the removal of his covert tribute to local dissidents from the side of a department store in Hong Kong illustrates the shrinking space for free expression in the Chinese territory.
\nThe digital artwork \u201cNo Rioters,\u201d by Los Angeles-based artist Patrick Amadon, makes covert references to jailed pro-democracy protesters. It was one of several pieces to appear on a billboard outside the Sogo department store in the popular Causeway Bay shopping district during Hong Kong Art Week, but was removed this week after the deception was revealed.
\nThe red-and-black video installation flashes the names and prison sentences of convicted protesters, including prominent figures such as former law professor Benny Tai, in text that couldn\u2019t be seen by the naked eye.
\nHong Kong, a former British colony that was promised 50 years of continued rights and freedoms when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997, was roiled by months of antigovernment protests in 2019 that sometimes turned violent. Beijing responded the following year by imposing a sweeping national security law that it said was necessary to restore stability.
\nCritics say authorities have used the law to crack down on civil liberties, and that it has also encouraged self-censorship. Earlier this week, local screenings of a British horror film featuring Winnie the Pooh, a character whose lighthearted association with Chinese President Xi Jinping mainland authorities have tried to suppress, were canceled without explanation.
\nThe artwork\u2019s removal also comes as Hong Kong tries to revive its international reputation with events like Art Week, which is headlined by Art Central and the Asia edition of Art Basel.
\nAmadon said he had paid close attention to the 2019 protests, and that he was commenting on the movement as well as Art Week and \u201cthe willful blindness of a lot of the world.\u201d
\n\u201cI wanted to honor the protesters,\u201d he told NBC News in an interview. \u201cI wanted to show solidarity with the sacrifices that they made.\u201d
\nMore than 10,000 people have been arrested in connection with the 2019 unrest, and more than 200 under the national security law, which can lead to a sentence of up to life imprisonment. Demonstrators have objected to government descriptions of them as \u201crioters,\u201d a crime that under Hong Kong law is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
\nAmadon said he received a message earlier this week from Art Innovation Gallery, which organized the installation, saying they needed to speak urgently.
\nHe said he was told that Sogo had removed the artwork \u201cbecause they had been threatened with heavy fines and legal action\u201d and that the gallery, which is based in Italy, was also concerned about legal ramifications.
\nIt is not clear whether the government was involved in the decision to remove the artwork. The Hong Kong police did not respond to a request for comment, while the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau told NBC News it had not contacted Sogo about the matter.
\nSogo and Art Innovation Gallery did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
\nFrancesca Boffetti, the gallery\u2019s chief executive, told The Associated Press she did not know whether the government had ordered the work be taken down and that there had been no mention of any law or potential fines.
\n\u201cOur intermediary told us that the owners of Sogo were concerned about the sensitive political content hidden behind Patrick\u2019s work, so they decided to remove the work from the exhibition immediately,\u201d she told the news agency in an email.
\nAmadon said he was surprised the work, which also includes a panning surveillance camera, went up to begin with. Though the protesters\u2019 details appear too quickly to be seen by the naked eye, he said they could be captured by high-speed cameras.
\n\u201cI was happy to see that it had a longer run than I expected it to have,\u201d said Amadon, who did not tell the gallery about the hidden messages beforehand.
\nThe exhibition, \u201cThe Sound of Pixels,\u201d began March 17 and ended on Thursday.
\nIn a way, Amadon said, the removal helped \u201ccomplete the work.\u201d
\nIn the Hong Kong of a few years ago, \u201cputting up this art piece would have been a perfectly legal and free expression,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cThe very fact that it was taken down today objectively shows you that freedoms of expression and speech have been eroded.\u201d<\/p>\n

This data comes from MediaIntel.Asia's Media Intelligence and Media Monitoring Platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HONG KONG \u2014 An American artist says the removal of his covert tribute to local dissidents from the side of a department store in Hong Kong illustrates the shrinking space for free expression in the Chinese territory.
\nThe digital artwork \u201cNo Rioters,\u201d …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":253,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,639,928,339,194,1108,940,334],"tags":[8493,3472,10338,10459,2274,3574,10315,2172,1816,10385,7596,2972],"class_list":["post-150342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beijing","category-california","category-censorship","category-hong-kong","category-news-chinese-law","category-police","category-tourism","category-university","tag-britain","tag-chinese","tag-democracy","tag-department-store","tag-entertainment","tag-italy","tag-media-intelligence","tag-national-security","tag-prison","tag-security-law","tag-sports","tag-xi-jinping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150342"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/253"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150343,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150342\/revisions\/150343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinalegalblog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}