The city of Berlin is perceived as a place of refuge for voices who have fallen afoul of China’s government, a narrative crystalized by Germany’s diplomatic efforts to grant Ai Weiwei permission to leave China in 2015. This image was bolstered in 2018 when, after eight years in house arrest, artist and poet Liu Xi, widow of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, who died in custody, was released and promptly moved to Berlin, where she was met with open arms. And in 2019, Germany was the first nation to grant asylum politically to Hong Kong activists.
But that’s not everyone’s story. A growing community of Sinophone (Chinese-speaking) artists have arrived in Berlin for a variety of reasons, and are working with varying degrees of politically charged work. Established names such as He Xiangyu, media artist and activist aaajiao, and painters Yuan Yuan and Jai Dachun have set up studios in the German capital, in the past few years—before the outbreak of Covid-19—each splitting their time between Berlin and Beijing or Shanghai.
In 2018, the Guangdong Times…
