
India asks Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art to remove a politically sensitive work from Indian Highway exhibition
Video artist Tejal Shah's art work I Love my India has been removed from the Indian Highway exhibition at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing – not at the request of the Chinese government, but rather one from Indian Government officials. The work depicting Muslims talking about the Godhra riots upset the sentiments of the Indian community in China leading the Indian Ministry of external Affairs to intervene.
The exhibition curated by Julia Peyton-Jones, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Gunnar Kvaran opened at Serpentine in 2008 and traveled to venues in Oslo, Lyon and Rome without incident before its Bejing outing at the UCCA. Neither of the institutions has commented on the removal of the video which focuses, according to a description by the Serpentine, on “the ignorance and lack of understanding of the genocide against the Muslim minority in 2002.”
Image: A video still from Tejal Shah's I Love my India