Myanmar/Burma: RFI reports of greater freedom of expression for artists
The fact that democracy activist – now politician – Aun San Suu Kyi can have his paintings exhibited at Pansodan Gallery in Myanmar is proof that censorship is at last on the way out, reported Radio France International. “For about the last 50 years we were under the very strong …. censorship. Whenever we [did] [...]
CNN’s ‘On China’: Talk about censoring contemporary art
“Which topics can you not talk about as an artist?” asks Kristie Lu Stout, host of the American tv-channel CNN’s programme ‘On China’, talking with guests in the studio about censorship of contemporary art in China. In this 2-minute excerpt from the programme, Wang Chunchen, curator of China Pavilion in Venice Biennale 2013, replies with [...]
South Africa: Another painting removed from gallery
A painting depicting South African president Jacob Zuma and former president Nelson Mandela as whites and former heads of state Hendrik Verwoerd, John Vorster, PW Botha and FW de Klerk as blacks, was removed from an art exhibition in Nelspruit. The painting, created by Kobus Myburgh, was part of an exhibition scheduled to open at [...]
Russia: Self-censorship and fear has poisoned the arts sector
Criminal prosecution of artists in Russia casts chill on expression, wrote Index on Censorship on 17 April 2013. Russian MPs back harsher anti-blasphemy law, reported BBC News on 10 April 2012, after Russian MPs had given initial approval to an anti-blasphemy law with tougher jail terms or fines for anyone found guilty of offending religious [...]
United Kingdom: Play about Ai Weiwei’s fight for freedom of expression in China
A theatre play about the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei premiered on a London theater on 16 April 2013. The 19 April performance of the play will be streamed online around the globe. It’s uncertain whether Internet users in China will be able to see it, though. The reason for streaming the play is, according to [...]
Russia: The arts sector faces increasing self-censorship
Moscow artist Victoria Lomasko discussed the confrontation between her country’s orthodox church and Russian artists in an interview with DW, Germany’s international broadcaster. To avoid attacks from the Orthodox groups, artists and curators take cover in self-censorship, she told DW. Victoria Lomasko is a Russian artist who is most famous in the West for her [...]
South African photographer honoured at Index on Censorship awards
South African photographer Zanele Muholi was honoured at Index on Censorship awards for ‘courage and the powerful statements made by her work’. In the last year, four women in South Africa have been murdered because of their sexuality, including Phumeza Nkolonzi, 22, who was shot dead in front of her grandmother and niece, and Sihle [...]
Myanmar/Burma: Censorship on art has relaxed, three artists say
“While censorship of print media has ended, restrictions on the visual arts are still officially in place,” said visual artist Maung Khine Mar from Yangon to The Myanmar Times. “Censorship on art has relaxed quite a bit, but they still have a blinkered attitude towards any art that goes beyond Myanmar’s cultural norms, such as [...]
France: Art museum censored by Facebook for nude photograph
On 1 March 2013, the Jeu de Paume art museum’s Facebook account was blocked for 24 hours, following a decision by Facebook to remove a photograph the Parisian museum posted on its page and which the social network ruled was a violation of its Rights and Responsibilities guidelines. Facebook warned that next time it happens, [...]
Denmark: Apple’s puritanical censorship creates a movement
“An international protest movement is under way that has had enough of Apple’s new-puritamism and negative cultural domination,” wrote journalist Morten Løkkegaard in Politiken on 8 February 2013. After a second Danish author, Michael Næsted Nielsen, was informed by Apple that his new book, ‘Slaven’ (‘The Slave’) is going to be censored from iBookstore because [...]
Switzerland: Ban on photographic book
On 24 January 2013, Zurich Civil Court confirmed a ban on the photographic book by Christian Lutz, ‘In Jesus’ Name’, based on complaints from 21 people who appear in the book. The photographer, along with the Musée de l’Elysée and Lars Müller Publishers, have called the ban a “breach of freedom of speech and of [...]
United Kingdom: Political artwork censored at ‘Banned’ festival
A piece of work by controversial artist, poet and campaigner Vince Laws on show at the Jubilee Library in Hove, United Kingdom, was censored and removed by the city council. “Our general policy is that we do not display material promoting a particular political, philosophical or religious view point”, a spokesperson for the council said. [...]
Egypt’s art world rallies to defend freedom of expression
Artists, curators, critics and academics have united against president Mohamed Morsi and his controversial new constitution, which they say threatens freedom of expression and creativity. An arts forum has been closed. A cartoonist has been taken to court, reported The Art Newspaper. In December 2012, Yasser Borhami, a member of the Al-Nour party, praised the [...]
Denmark: Art happening or hate speech?
Limits of free expression in the arts are currently being discussed and tested in court in Denmark. In a trial on 13 December 2012, the prosecutor claimed the artist Firoozeh Bazrafkan has violated the Danish “racism article” against hate speech, while the artist claimed it was an art happening and even turned her own trial [...]
USA: Climate change sculpture removed after upsetting donors
Does corporate sponsorships by companies like BP and Shell have an impact on artistic freedom in the UK and USA? After a controversial climate change art installation was removed from a US university campus because it upset donors from the energy industry, Kevin Smith, co-editor of Not If But When – Culture Beyond Oil, is [...]
Myanmar/Burma: City ban on graffiti art
On 10 December 2012, Yangon city authorities imposed a ban prohibiting anyone from drawing on public buildings, roads and bridges, as well as in schools and parks. Authorities said anyone defying the ban would face an unspecified punishment. According to an article in Huffington Post, Yangon’s graffiti artists said they expected many to continue drawing, [...]
USA: Library covers up controversial artwork
A piece of artwork by Kara Walker which shows a slave performing oral sex was covered after employees of the Newark Library stated they did not like the image. Kara Walker, a renowned African-American artist who examines race, gender, sexuality and violence, created the drawing. Her drawing depicts the horrors of reconstruction, 20th-century Jim Crowism [...]
Namibia: Artist banned due to “formal and content” issues
A controversial and edgy exhibition of works by renowned Namibian artist, Imke Rust, has been banned from the Woermannhaus gallery due to the critical stance the artist takes on environmental threats affecting the coast. Other artists are now threatening to boycott the gallery in protest against the decision to ban the work of Imke Rust. [...]
Denmark: Row over ban of theatre group’s burning flag
This photograph of a naked woman and a burning Danish flag was supposed to have been promoting a new production by the theatre group Danskdansk (‘Danishdanish’) in the capital of Copenhagen. But the advertisement agency Clear Channel did not want to see it displayed on the back of 18 Copenhagen buses, and the director of [...]
iTunes: Apple troubled by women’s bodies
Salwa Al Neimi’s erotic novel ‘The Proof of the Honey’ was removed from the iTunes store because of its cover which features part of a woman’s naked back and bottom, said the publisher, Europa Editions, in a statement on its Facebook page on 9 November 2012. The book has already been banned in some Arab [...]
Poland: Belarusian exhibition censored in the last minute
A Belarusian outdoor visual arts exhibition in Warsaw underwent serious censorship. Representatives of the Belarusian embassy removed nine paintings because they found them ‘inappropriate’. The Belarusian version of the exhibition, entitled the Zabor art project, was displayed on a fence in Minsk in the summer 2012, but less than an hour before the exhibition was [...]
Apple’s iBookstore censorship case: The distinction between porn and art
The distinction between porn and art is often in the eye of the beholder, wrote John Brownlee, cultofmac.com, in his comment on the latest censorship case of Apple’s iBookstore: When Danish author Peter Øvig Knudsen submitted his latest work of non-fiction, ‘Hippie 2’, to the iBookstore, the e-book was rejected based upon the fact that [...]
Syria: Art, creative resistance and active citizenship
The links between creative resistance and active citizenship, art and civic conscience have been a strong component of the Syrian uprising. Finally, citizens have turned into peer-creators and users, who have now the tools to express their creativity. BY DONATELLA DELLA RATTA • OCTOBER 2012 • [A4 PDF] During the early days [...]
USA: Art work removed from exhibition after complaints about nudity
The photo art work ‘Quotidian’ by Betsy Schneider documents the artist’s daughter growing up in a series of photographs in which the girl is nude. The work was exhibited at and then removed from the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, USA, in response to complaints about nudity. A coalition of artists, critics, [...]
The invisible red line – maneuvering Chinese art censorship
Art can both reflect and shape reality. It is the fear of this power to amplify and produce meaning which inspires censorship. In their quest for freedom of expression, Chinese artists have had to face a variety of censorship strategies. Some are rooted in politics, while others hold to conservative moral and aesthetic codes. This [...]
Nepal: The rise and ‘ban’ of the collateral
How a young Nepali painters’ works raised questions on artistic freedom in Kathmandu, the City of Temples. BY KANCHAN G. BURATHOKI • OCTOBER 2012 • [A4 PDF] On Tuesday afternoon, 11 September 2012, when the exhibition ‘The Rise of the Collateral’ had only nine days left to conclude, after having been at display at Siddhartha [...]
Symbols into soldiers: Art, censorship, and religion
Notwithstanding almost two and a half centuries of separation of church and state, religious groups in the US have never given up the desire to impose their values and beliefs on society at large. Controversies around art with religious content persist with some regularity, generally spurred by private religious groups or conservative – or just [...]
Serbia: Row over art exhibition depicting Jesus
Serbia’s prime minister said an art exhibition by the Swedish artist Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin featuring controversial images of Jesus was a ‘provocation’ that contributed to a ban on Belgrade’s gay parade. The Serbian Interior Ministry banned a pride parade in Belgrade for security reasons for the second year running, after ultranationalists had threatened the march, [...]
Tunisia’s ground zero for creative freedom
The ‘Nadia Jelassi’ affair has become a stake, a symbol of the successful democratic transition of the Tunisian revolution, and could represent ground zero for individual freedoms in the country that in late 2010 sparked off a world geopolitical earthquake. BY KERIM BOUZOUITA • OCTOBER 2012 • [PDF] IT’S 2012 IN TUNISIA and artist Mohamed [...]
Sun Mu – the faceless painter
Sun Mu is not the artist’s actual name. It’s a nom de plume that uses a combination of two Korean words that translate to ‘The Absence of Borders’. It not only represents what he feels is the transcendence of art but also the literal military demarcation line that keeps the Korean people separated. BY JASON [...]
Tunisians experience new kind of ‘censorship’ in the public domain
Alice Fordham reports from Tunisia, in an article in the National, on how artists have to deal with new types of censorship after the revolution. “What a paradox to assert today that it is even more difficult than yesterday to be an artist in Tunisia! After a popular uprising which could (should) have generated more [...]
France: Institutional censorship of art to guard ‘cultural neutrality’
“When my voice gets silenced, my rights are affected. When a cultural institution cannot uphold the rights and freedom of intellectual artistic expression of the artists they select to exhibit, it is inexcusable,” wrote the artist Sundus Abdul Hadi in response to the removal of her art piece at an exhibition Institut du Monde Arabe [...]
Comments on Lebanon’s censorship situtation
Tarek Joseph Chemaly, a Lebanese artist and university lecturer, published a personal comment about censorship of the arts in Lebanon. And according to Giedre Steikunaite, a freelance writer currently based in London, wrote an article about censorship in Lebanon for New Internationalist. Creative acts of resistance are springing up in Lebanon in direct response to [...]
Nepal: Death threats against artist who painted Hindu deities
Manish Harijan, a Nepali artist, whose works are on show at an art gallery in Kathmandu, has received death threats from activists of the Nepal-based World Hindu Federation in reaction to his paintings which combine images of Hindu deities and Western superheroes, reported UNESCO on 14 September 2012. In particular, a painting by Manish Harijan [...]
India: Renowned cartoonist arrested and charged with sedition
Aseem Trivedi, a renowned Indian political cartoonist, best known for launching the campaign Cartoons Against Corruption, and founding member of Save Your Voice — a movement against internet censorship in India — was arrested on 9 September 2012 and charged with sedition. Although the Bombay High Court has since granted him bail, Trivedi is
China: Censorship officers order paintings covered or removed
At a recent show in the M97 gallery in Shanghai, censorship officers ordered several paintings covered or removed, even after pre-approving the works, reported Al Jazeera in a video report on Youtube: ‘China art bears brunt of leadership change’. China is set for one of its clandestine, once-every-decade leadership changes, and in the country’s art [...]
China: Russian artist refused to follow Chinese censors’ ultimatum
“The Chinese officials gave me an ultimatum to remove the first two questions from the installation [‘Moscow Poll’]. I did not agree to their demands and refused to participate in the biennale,“ the Russian artist Yuri Albert said. The works of four Russian artists were to be exhibited in the Moscow Pavilion in the 2012 [...]
China: Provocative artists intimidated with seizures and imprisonment
Issue 34 of the German magazine Der Spiegel contains a long article about how authorities in China allegedly intimidate provocative artists with tax laws, seizures, and imprisonment as tools to repress dissident voices. The article is primarily based on interviews with two gallery owners and the 30-year-old artist Zhao Zhao who has been Ai Weiwei’s [...]
Germany: Row over caricature of Jesus in art exhibition
At the exhibition ‘Caricatura VI – The Comic Art – analog, digital, international’ in Kassel in Germany, a cartoon created by cartoonist Mario Lars has been removed after protests that it hurt people’s religious feelings The drawing depicts Jesus suffering on the cross and a speech bubble, which apparently contains words from God, who says: [...]
Japan: Company’s attempt to close South Korean photo exhibition failed
At the last minute the Japanese camera manufacturer Nikon wanted to cancel a photo exhibition which was to be held in Tokyo from 26 June to 9 July 2012 at the Shinjuku Nikon Salon by the South Korean photographer Ahn Sehong. Nikon reportedly received a large number of complaints against the exhibition in Tokyo which [...]
Macedonia: Work of art destroyed for offending religious feelings
The organisers of a festival in Skopje allegedly destroyed a work of art which was already on display on a street-billboard, claiming that it hurt religious feelings, reported Harald Schenker of BalkanInsight The organisers of the festival which is held under the auspices of the City of Skopje decided to remove a billboard i.e. tear into bits [...]
Exhibition of contemporary art dedicated to human rights
‘Newtopia: The State of Human Rights’ is an international visual arts exhibition dedicated to human rights. It contains works by over 70 artists, and opens in Mechelen in Belgium on 31 August 2012, where it runs til 10 December 2012. The exhibition, curated by Katerina Gregos, builds on the long relationship between art and human [...]
USA: Cartoon strip about abortion law removed by newspapers
A Doonesbury cartoon strip about Texas abortion law has been removed by an increasing number of American newspapers Garry Trudeau, whose satirical cartoon strip Doonesbury has been published by hundreds of newspapers around the word for decades, met unprecedented controversy after he planned to dedicate a week’s worth of strips to a satirical look at [...]
Tunisia: Artists under attack
Art pieces at the ‘Printemps des Arts’ fair in Tunis have caused public outrage for being ‘blasphemous’ and offensive to Islam. The artists involved have received death threats and their works at the art fair were destroyed. The Minister of Culture condemned the artworks, which in return caused an uproar in the Tunisian arts community. [...]
Singapore: Row over ‘draconian’ vandalism law
After being arrested for posting stickers in public spaces, 27-year-old street artist Samantha Lo – the so-called ‘Sticker Lady’ – has inspired a massive online campaign. She could be facing three years in prison if convicted. British newspaper The Guardian describes Singapore as a city obsessed with order and where ‘vandals’ can be flogged. If [...]
USA: Exhibition about repression and censorship in Russia
The parallels between Soviet-era repression and Mr. Putin’s authoritarian rule are at the heart of ‘Lest We Forget: Masters of Soviet Dissent’ a new exhibition of paintings and drawings by Mr. Lapin and the late Mr. Zhdanov at Charles Krause/Reporting Fine Art gallery in Washington, USA. In May 2012, the Washington Times published an article [...]
German exhibition Documenta accused of censoring art
The German artist Gregor Schneider says that the organisers of the exhibition Documenta 13 have “censored” a work he planned to install in the Karlskirche church in Kassel, home of the quinquennial exhibition until 16 September 2012. Gregor Schneider says that his art piece ‘It’s all Rheydt Kolkata, Kassel 2012′, consisting of material dredged from [...]
Q&A on censorship
Alasdair Foster, a consultant and founder of Cultural Development Consulting (CDC), asked 14 artists and colleagues – such as a curator, a festival director, a museum manager, a producer, photographers and writers – around the world three questions about censorship: • Have you ever been censored? • Can you give an example of justified censorship? [...]
Censorship controversy at Tunis Art Fair
Hours after the opening of Printemps des Arts fair in Tunis, a controversy broke out when one of the organisers asked the artist Electro Jaye to take down his piece, ‘La république Islaïque de Tunisie’. (The word “islaïque” is a combination of the word “Islam” with the word “laïque,” which means “laic” or “secular.”) The [...]
USA: Attempt to stamp out homosexuality from cartoons
The conservative American mothers’ group One Million Moms has launched an attempt to stamp out homosexuality from the world of graphic novels. The American Family Association-run conservative Christian organisation has taken issue with the news that DC Comics is planning to reveal that one of its established characters is gay – speculation is centring around [...]
Israeli cartoons removed from Facebook
Four political satire images by the cartoonist Mysh have been removed from Facebook and Mysh’s account was suspended for three days as “punishment”, reported the liberal Jewish blogger Richard Silverstein. One of the censored cartoons was about the Israeli pogromists who assaulted African refugees in Tel Aviv. Others were The Green Sabra (a parody of [...]
South Africa: Controversy over painting depicting president’s genitals
South African President Jacob Zuma and his African National Congress sought a court order to have a painting depicting the president’s genitals removed from an art gallery but two men took matters into their own hands by defacing the portrait with gobs of paint. The different reactions to a painting of President Jacob Zuma with [...]
Audience of Doha Debates rejected censorship of the arts
The question of censorship and its impact on the arts was raised at the Doha Debates, broadcasted live on BBC World News, where 58 per cent of the audience carried the motion “This House believes that censorship makes a mockery of the arts.” State censorship of the arts is still strongly enforced in the Gulf [...]
Kuwait: “Inappropriate” art exhibition closed after three hours
At 7pm on 5 March 2012, the Al M. Gallery in Kuwait City opened a new exhibition of paintings by Shurooq Amin that was scheduled to last until 1 April. The exhibit was closed three hours later by authorities who deemed the artworks “inappropriate”. At about 9pm police, responding to a complaint, arrived and began [...]
Party-organiser removes painting of woman in niqab
An oil painting of a stripper in a cocktail glass wearing the Muslim headdress niqab was to supposed to be an eye catcher for the music event ‘Haram!’ in Odense, Denmark. Instead it provoked a fierce debate, and after threats of a fatwa, the organiser, Amin Safari, has removed the image from the Facebook page [...]
Iranian Shirin Neshat: Our artists are at risk
Shirin Neshat has lived much of her life outside her native Iran. Her photographs and films offer a glimpse of the cultural, religious and political realities that shape the identities of Muslim women worldwide. In December 2010, TED posted this talk by Shirin Neshat in which she illustrates the challenges she faces as well as [...]
Great Britain: London police ordered gallery to take down image
An art work depicting the Greek myth of Leda and the swan was ordered by two London Metropolitan Police offiers to be removed because it allegedly ‘condoned bestiality’. From 23 March to 21 April 2012 the London gallery Scream ran an exhibition with Derrick Santini, ‘Metamorphosis’, which consisted of two bodies of work, each displaying [...]
Visual artist banned in China
An exhibition with works of the Germany-based artist Simon Raab, which was scheduled to open in Beijing, was closed and the art work returned to Germany. Simon Raab’s banned art includes an abstract piece entitled ‘Tibetan Flags’ from a series called ‘From Behind These Bars’. “Perhaps it was naive of Raab to imagine that a [...]
Iran: Graffiti artists speak out in video interview
In this short video film, the two members of Tehran Ratz – a dynamic duo of Iranian graffiti artists – discuss their efforts to use graffiti to challenge the legitimacy of the Iranian regime and to change international assumptions about their country’s people. They aim to give their illegal graffiti art an original Iranian identity. [...]
Exhibition of ‘Censorship in Art from Eden to Milwaukee’
The ACLU of Wisconsin, USA, showcases three local artists whose work has been censored or challenged in some way: Anne Kingsbury, Fahimeh Vahdat and Philip Krejcarek The “Eye of the Beholder: Censorship in Art from Eden to Milwaukee” will take place at the ACLU offices in the Marshall Building, a hub of art venues on [...]
Malaysia: Censorship in performing arts on the rise
With censorship in popular media and performing arts seemingly on the rise in Malaysia, has the Muslim majority nation’s morality crusade impacted the visual art world as well? There is certainly no shortage of examples, reported Art Radar Asia on 18 April 2012: In a 2006 travelling show of South-east Asian-born artists living in Australia entitled [...]
Swedish ‘cake-gate’ about art, racism and freedom of expression
The cake installation ‘Könsstympningstårtan’ – ‘The Circumcision Tart’ – by the artist Makode Aj Linde depicting a naked black woman at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm sparked outrage and brought tempers to a boil in mid-April 2012. In conjunction with the 75th anniversary celebrations of the Swedish Artists’ National Organisation (Konstnärernas Riksorganisations, KRO) [...]
Siberian bishop demands censorship of erotic Picassos
In the city of Novosibirsk, Orthodox bishop Tikhon has called for the closure of a show of the Picasso’s “Suite 347” series of erotic etchings, calling them a threat to public morals. Tikhon took offense to the prints’ graphic sexual nature, noting that there were an inappropriate number of children at the exhibition and grandiosely [...]
American campus debate: Is it censorship or simply courtesy?
A confrontation over an art piece containing adult content has been seething within the Arts Building of Auraria Higher Education Center in Denver, USA, where accusations of censorship caused the controversy to boil over. According to The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a student’s work of art on a campus cannot be prohibited if [...]
Fear of censorship could stop art museum plans in Abu Dhabi
In 2006, it was announced that the city council of Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, would build a 30,000-square-metre Guggenheim museum. In April 2012, the plans were reported by The Guardian to have been scaled back, if not completely scrapped, over concern that the western Guggenheim brand and perceptions of contemporary art [...]
Artistic censorship denies opportunity for dialogue and growth
The mural ‘Fast Life’, created by the French street artist MTO, was whitewashed due to censorship over its perceived meaning, wrote Denise Kowal, Event Chair of Sarasota Chalk Festival in Florida, USA, who argued that this kind of artistic censorship denies an opportunity for dialogue and growth: “It was a skilled work of art that [...]
Ai Weiwei: Chinese censorship of the internet will fail
In April 2012 Ai Weiwei turned his attention to China’s censorship of the internet, in a comment piece penned for The Guardian where concluded that the Chinese government will ultimately fail to control the internet as the web is “uncontrollable”. Ai Weiwei writes: “China may seem quite successful in its controls, but it has only [...]
Cartoonist Ali Ferzat: Revolution redefines art in Syria
BBC News interviewed the Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat who in August 2011 was attacked by masked men, beaten, and dumped by the side of the road. An attack which made headlines across the world. BBC News met the artist in a small art gallery behind Sloane Square in London where his sly deconstructions of authoritarianism [...]
