A curator flees Bangkok after China deems his art show too provocative

The curator of a recent museum exhibition in Thailand that criticised authoritarian governments in China, Myanmar and other countries expected a pushback, but not one so swift that he would have to flee the country.

The curator, an artist from Myanmar who goes by the name Sai, said he was in the museum’s parking lot two days after the July opening when its directors warned him in digital messages that Thai police officers were inside, asking for his contact details.

Fearing that he would be arrested and deported back to neighboring Myanmar for his work on the show, Mr Sai said, he scrambled to a Bangkok airport and took the first available flight to London, leaving his belongings behind.

“We expected there would be some kind of formal hindrance, but we didn’t expect it to be that immediate,” said Mr Sai, who fled Myanmar after a 2021 military takeover and designed the show to feature artists from Myanmar and countries that remain friendly with its ruling military junta.

Later that week, the directors told him that Chinese authorities wanted the museum to remove the names and works of four artists in the show from Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang – politically sensitive places where the Chinese government has been tightening its control.

The show at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center, which runs through Oct 19, was not taken down.

But the directors removed the four artists’ names from the exhibition materials with thick black lines.

They also removed a Tibetan flag – a rising sun over a snowcapped mountain – and a sky blue flag with a white crescent and star, generally used as a symbol of independence for the Uyghur people who live in Xinjiang, their homeland.

China has actively pressured some city officials and cultural establishments overseas to comply with its censorship requests.

Sometimes those officials and organisations push back. But in this case, the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok encountered no resistance.

The museum’s directors told Mr Sai in a July email that they had been warned by the embassy, the Thai Foreign Ministry and Bangkok city officials that the show could cause “diplomatic tensions” for Thailand with China, according to a copy of the email reviewed by The New York Times.

China wields geopolitical influence in South-east Asia as the largest trading partner for most countries in the region. That includes Thailand, which relies heavily on Chinese tourists.

The Chinese government often engages in “intermediated censorship” inside and outside its borders by delegating responsibility to internet companies, filmmakers and art galleries to remove sensitive materials before problems arise, said University of Toronto sociology professor Philip Fang, who has studied China’s efforts to censor the arts around the world.

“It’s more sophisticated and very hard to trace” than overt censorship, Prof Fang said.

In response to questions about the Bangkok exhibition, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement that matters concerning Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong were “purely China’s internal affairs.”

It added that an exhibition had “brazenly advocated” the idea that the three places were independent from China.

The Thai Foreign Ministry declined to comment.

The Bangkok Art and Culture Center did not respond to questions about the changes that were made to the exhibition. The changes were reported earlier by Reuters and other news outlets.

The show, “Constellation of Complicity,” aims to illustrate how authoritarian regimes cooperate on weapons, surveillance, trade and repression, according to the museum’s website.

Among other topics, it addresses a devastating civil war in Myanmar that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions of others.

Myanmar’s ruling military junta has been widely ostracised since the 2021 coup, though not by Russia, a major weapons supplier, or by China, which has been intervening in the war to protect its investments.

A mural by Mr Sai depicts China’s leader, Xi Jinping, and other authoritarian rulers extending their hands to Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the junta.

The leaders are surrounded by sketches of weapons supplied to Myanmar and used by the junta to target pro-democracy rebels and civilians.

In another work, by Russian filmmakers Taisiya Krugovykh and Vasily Bogatov, a child’s cradle sits in the centre of a red room, shrouded in black.

A sale of fighter jets and other weapons between Russia and Myanmar is hauntingly narrated in Russian to the tune of a lullaby:

Russia supplies Myanmar with gear

To keep its regime in control and clear

MiG-29s and Su-30s in flight

Cut through the clouds, a menacing sight.

But none of the works in the show by artists from Myanmar, Iran, Russia or Syria – even the mural of Mr Xi – were altered. Instead, the censorship focused entirely on artists from Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang.

Since 2020, Beijing has imposed draconian national security laws in Hong Kong, eroding the territory’s semiautonomous status.

It has interfered with the succession of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, and separated Tibetan children from their families.

And in the Xinjiang region, at least a million Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority, have been forced into detention or work camps.

The artists in the show addressed some of those sensitive issues in their works. And the authorities noticed.

A multimedia piece by Tibetan artist Tenzin Mingyur Paldron showing Tibetan religious practices was almost completely removed.

All that was left of Mr Tenzin’s work was a traditional Tibetan woven door cover, left hanging in the middle of a gallery without context.

Visitors to the exhibition can still see an interactive installation about espionage by Hong Kong artists Clara Cheung and Gum Cheng Yee Man, and a 12-minute film by Ms Mukaddas Mijit, an Uyghur filmmaker, that explores life in exile. But the artists’ names have been blacked out, along with Mr Tenzin’s.

Early this year, Thailand deported 40 Uyghurs to Xinjiang, which they had left to escape persecution.

At the time, Thai officials said they had acted upon Beijing’s request.

Ms Mijit said the case made it clear to her that China could put pressure on Thailand to carry out its demands.

But she said she was surprised by how quickly the authorities acted in the museum, which she described as a space meant for free expression.

“It’s only because I’m Uyghur,” she said. “If I were Iranian, they wouldn’t care.”

Ms Krugovykh and Mr Bogatov said they saw irony in the censorship of the Bangkok show because they had met Mr Sai two years earlier at an event in Paris where exiled dissidents discussed transnational repression.

Mr Bogatov, who fled Russia shortly after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, said he and Ms Krugovykh feel that the space for political art is shrinking around the world.

“But people who are in it cannot just stop expressing themselves,” he said.

In a phone interview from London, Mr Sai said that he planned to bring the show to countries where it could be staged without censorship.

He said he was afraid to return to Thailand but had no regrets.

“For all four years of my exile, we’ve done things knowing there is a risk, even sometimes life and death,” he said. “But it’s the right thing to do.” NYTIMES