Art with a message.
That’s the driving force behind Uncompromising Courage, a travelling art exhibition with the Chinese Falun Gong spiritual movement as its inspiration. After stops in Asia and the United States, it is at Toronto’s City Hall until November 17.
Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual movement that officially began in 1992 in China, but draws inspiration from ancient Buddhist and Taoist ideas. The movement has since gained popularity across the world for its blend of meditational exercises and spiritual dogma. The three pillars of the belief system are truthfulness, compassion and tolerance, and practitioners claim to find health and inner peace by living by these principles.
Wenli Chang, a member of the Falun Dafa Association of Canada, says the Chinese government initially supported the movement. However, after it gained widespread popularity across China, she says the government began to fear its influence, and then-president Jiang Zemin began an aggressive crackdown. Her organization says over 1000 Falun Gong followers have died in the process, with many more unaccounted for in prisons and labour camps.
Chang is one of the event’s organizers in Ontario. She says the Uncompromising Courage exhibit wants to spread Falun Gong’s message and make people aware of the persecution followers are facing.
“The beauty of the [Falun Gong] teachings is one thing we want people to know, and also the persecution. People are still dying in labour camps in China. We want people to be aware of the severity of this persecution. It’s an ongoing issue,” she says.
The artists in the show are all followers of Falun Gong, and have each been affected directly or indirectly by the prosecution. Artist Kunlun Zhang, for example, was released from a Chinese labour camp in 2001 after an Amnesty International campaign. The works combine reality and fantasy in a manner that is both realistic and simplistic, and while artistic merit may sometimes be lacking, the paintings can be moving all the same.
One series of paintings depicts some of the brutal torture methods Chinese officials are alleged to have used on imprisoned Falun Gong followers, portraying prisoners being kicked, beaten and burned with cigarettes. These are the most graphic works in the show, and while they rely on some stale imagery (prisoners have halos painted around their heads, while ghoul-faced government officials have skulls painted around theirs) they are also among the most effective and the most moving.
Whether or not one regards Falun Gong as a legitimate belief system, or is impressed by the sometimes simplistic artwork, the exhibit still strikes a nerve with the obvious passion and raw emotion it captures.
