Dengarkan

Homosexuality was decriminalized in China in 1997, but the age-old taboos surrounding sexuality have not gone away.

“Secret Love” is the first large modern art exhibit from China to deal with the sensitive subject of identity, norms and sexuality.

Curator Si Han, an expert on Chinese art trends, opens “Secret Love” the exhibition on taboo art.

“It was really hard to find these artists and especially these works. Maybe you know these artists and you’ve heard their names, but you don’t know that they have another kind of work which they seldon show and people seldom talk about.”

Walking in, one is greeted by four huge photographs by Wang Zi called Good Day Comrade.

Curator Si Han says the days of the collective thinking in China have been swept away.

“Many people think that Chinese culture is about people who think alike, but that’s not necessarily the case. For example here are 4 pictures by Wang Zhi, a young artist born after 1980. He plays with the idea of collectivism and individualism. And to mark that there are people who think different.”

Rows of sailors in matching uniform, or construction workes with hard hats. All are straight rows, and seen from the back. In the right corner closest to the viewer are two of them with eyes closed, kissing.

These works were to have been displayed in 2009 in China’s 798 art district, but officials took them down.

This is the first time that so many gay Chinese artists are showing their works collectively – with 100 works by 27 artists on display.

Going up the stairs, curator Si Han stops at a black and white photo by Chi Peng.

It’s a pier jutting out on an immense, grey sea. On the pier stand small figures, dark in the contrasting light. There are hundreds of small birds circling overhead like a warning to the figures on the pier.

“This work is very important. It’s done by the artist Chi Peng, born in the 80s. In the background you see an old couple, closer to us you see two men holding a child. It’s interesting what Chi Peng took up, a very important topic of the situation of homosexual men. 90 percent of them are married. In China it’s important to give birth to a child to let the family name continue.”

In the series I Fuck Me we’re confronted with straightforward sexual rendezvous. One photo shows an office environment with two men having sex under a desk. In another, is a public toilet sign with two men in it, below and inside the toilet, they are locked in an embrace.

Artist Chi Peng doesn’t want to give any specifics about the works.

“Look at these objects for what they are. Don’t look at them with your preconceived ideas when you know there’re done by a homosexual. Free your mind from that. Don’t label them, and most important, don’t associate them with anything unclean.”

Like the photographs and paintings, the six video films in the exhibition are personal reflections on society.

Included is Cannes film prize winner Zhang Yuan who made the first Chinese feature film with homosexuality as a theme. His documentary "Unspoiled Brats" tells a story about a gay man who has never known love, and undergoes one facelift after another, hoping that it will help him find it.

Well known gay rights artist and activist Shi Tou also features her works in the exhibition.

She was the first woman to come out openly as a lesbian in mainland China.

“I’ve had some struggle with peoples accepting who and what I am. My friends have no problem with that, and I always get inspiration from my partner.”

She’s standing in front of an underwater photo of her partner MingMing caught in the moment...holding her breath, yearning to breathe freely...but submerged both under water, and in the hard society she lives in.

In all, the works in “Secret Love” are interwoven across many genres, but all from the perspective of the individual, says curator Si Han. Their universal struggle is for recognition not as homosexual artists, but artists who happen to be homosexual.

“These young artists are different. They look inward. They want to change the world but they start from themselves. Through these images we see ourselves, we see the individual person, not a group of people.”