So Eunice “Clueless” Yung was giving the finger to Ai Weiwei’s artwork “raising the middle finger at Tiananmen,” which has now been removed from the M+ Museum. It was a great way to eliminate any future issues.

First of all, if even M+ Museum, blessed by Henry Tang and half-controlled by the government, can get into the hot water and has to succumb to the national security law, who else in the art sector would dare to say anything “out of line”? Everyone will be obedient and muted from now on. Killing one to warn a hundred, similar to going to one outlet to buy everything at once, that was clever of Yung.

Besides, M+ has always caused controversy even within the art sector. The leftists’ explosive discussions on the so-called “squandering on knock-offs” of “Kiyotomo sushi bar” and “Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries” is not a new topic. In fact, the art sector has long been debating about these exhibits. Matthias Woo said in Hong Kong cultural policies, the mainstream is exporting from the West, but not much attention has been paid to local art. Many people have indeed given M+ the same criticism.

But we must realize, these criticisms made during a peaceful time was purely a dispute on artistic positioning; now everything is about politics. What seems like a criticism of art is actually motivated by political pressure in the background.

The political assault has been started on Ai Weiwei’s “raising the middle finger at Tiananmen” because it is such an “obvious” piece of work that even someone like “Clueless” Yung can get what the creator wanted to express.

The enemy is playing the main tune of the Cultural Revolution that “art and culture must serve the politics.” Today’s focus might be a large piece of installation art, but looking back at the history, the phrase “using novels for anti-Party activities is a great invention” still sends a chill down the spine. By then, every aspect of cultural creation will be interfered with, affected, and ruined.

In the future, anyone who creates art will have to consult his/her object of political service beforehand. The artist’s creativity from now on will be like Mrs. Ip’s purple handbag on the floor, so valuable yet so casually cast aside.

The problem is, Ai Weiwei’s middle-finger artwork was not created yesterday. He started the “Study of Perspective” photographic series, throughout which his middle finger can be seen extending in front of significant institutions, landmarks, and monuments from around the world, back in 1995. He has not been once charged by Beijing for secession or subverting state power in the past 20 years because of this artwork. The crimes he has been accused of were economic crimes and producing pornography (referring to the photos “the portrait of one tiger and eight boobs”), but not the national security law because he was sticking the middle finger up to Tiananmen! Even a “strict” environment like mainland China can tolerate an artwork with a middle finger. Hong Kong, on the other hand, could only accommodate a clueless Yung, but not the middle finger of Ai Weiwei!

(Tsang Chi-ho, columnist)

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