Kazakhstan Criticised Over Exhibition Cancellation Amid Alleged Chinese Pressure

Days before its scheduled opening at the Central State Museum in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Shifting Grounds: Dissonance, Memory, and Landscape as a Site of Becoming has been scrapped, with the museum citing ‘venue repairs’.

Curated by Wang Chun-chi and backed by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture, the show was to feature eight mid-career Taiwanese artists exploring community, memory, and landscapes, including Yao Jui-chung and Wu Chi-tsung.

The museum formally invited the project on 20 August, and local media had billed it as ‘The First Taiwanese Art Exhibition in Almaty’. But the official title, which named Taiwan explicitly, was said by Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) to have drawn objections from Beijing.

Despite contracts being in place, the museum claimed that long-delayed repair funds had ‘suddenly arrived’, forcing a month-long closure. Within a week, however, the same venue hosted a fashion show, heightening suspicion of political interference.

A similar incident occurred in late July at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, where, under Chinese pressure, the names of four artists and some exhibition materials were removed from a group show on authoritarianism and resistance. In the latest development this September, the show’s curator has fled to the U.K., fearing possible arrest. —[O]

Main image: The Central State Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Photo: Yao Jui-chung.