On 9th June 2021, Hong Kong police raided the premise of the closed June 4th museum, dedicated to the victims of China’s 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The raid came just hours after the organisers of a banned candlelight vigil (commemorating the same event) were arrested and charged for “subversion” under the new national security law. Footage of the raid showed police officers carrying out parts of exhibits and display, including the cutout of the Goddess of Democracy.
As the group that organises the museum disbands under political pressures, this premise is closed forever. Nonetheless, an independently operated “8964 museum” still runs online.
This is not the first time a museum is forced to shut down because of political reasons, and sadly would neither be the last. In August 2019, the Japanese Aichi Triennale had to shut down the exhibition “After ‘Freedom of Expression’?” The show, which examined censorship in Japan, was closed after directors and curators received numerous threats — via email, phone, and even fax — objecting to a controversial work in the show. The piece in question was a life-size figurative sculpture by Korean artists Kim Seo-kyung and Kim Eun-sung, Statue of Peace (2011), depicting a “comfort woman,” or ianfu — one of the thousands of Asian women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II.
“This will be the worst censorship incident in Japan’s postwar period,” said the curators of the exhibition.
The exhibition was eventually reopened in October, after the decision to remove the work was challenged in the courts and a group of artists, including Claudia Martínez Garay, Tania Bruguera, and Pia Camil, demanded their own art be pulled from view in solidarity. But the debate lives on, and most recently, a planned exhibition of the contentious sculpture in Osaka lost permission to use a prefecture-run venue over “safety concerns”.
As these incidents show, it is alarming when museums are shut down, when parts of the past are hidden away from public eyes, when interpretations become monochrome – these are things that may mask the truth.
Marilyn French’s words in The Women’s Room are therefore a solemn reminder to us all: “You know, the Greek word for truth – ἀλήθεια – doesn’t mean the opposite of falsehood. It means the opposite of λήθη – oblivion. Truth is what is remembered.”
Remember the truth.
The writer of this article wishes to stay anonymous.