A Chinese artist takes on Beijing, carefully

Xu uses an iPad application and posts his drawings on both American and Chinese social media. He’s now made more than 1,000 of them. His cause is one that few other Chinese artists have been willing to embrace: defying Beijing’s support for Russia’s war.

The Chinese government has frequently imprisoned or harassed artists, writers and activists for challenging the authorities. The best known cases are artist Ai Weiwei, who has spent time in detention and now lives in exile, and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, who died in 2017 under police surveillance and after long years of imprisonment.

Xu’s Ukraine-themed work has already run afoul of Chinese censors twice, and the 67-year-old artist is well aware that he is walking a tightrope by taking on a project of political sensitivity in China.

“What I do is a tough balance," said Xu, a former dean of the school of arts at Renmin University in Beijing, as he sat in his studio in front of a large oil painting he made of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. A U.S. green card holder since 2017, he now makes his home with his wife and daughter in New York City. But he remains a Chinese citizen and goes back to visit his mother at least a couple of times a year.

Xu’s studio, converted from a warehouse, sits in a diverse neighborhood of Queens where single-family homes mix with small factories. Earlier artworks arrayed along the walls showcase his daring approach, dating to when he lived in China full-time.

Xu in his Queens studio, Feb. 10, surrounded by work from past projects. His painting of Ukrainian President Zelensky sits on the floor at left.

On one side is a series of portraits he painted in the early 2000s of Chinese coal miners, contrasting their struggles with China’s then-breathtaking economic growth. One portrait is of a miner pulled alive from a collapsed coal mine, his eyes covered with white bandages soaked in blood.

Across the studio are photos of a 2007 exhibit at a private gallery in Beijing of more than 100 portraits of people who lived through the Cultural Revolution, the mass movement Mao Zedong set in motion in 1966, unleashing a decade of chaos. One portrait in the group is of Mao; another is of Xu’s childhood neighbor.

Discussion of the Cultural Revolution is discouraged in China. Even in the 2000s, a time of relative openness in the country, it was daring for an artist to publicly recognize a historic event that the government would rather forget. Xu managed it by understanding where the red lines were.

“Authorities asked that we redact the images of some well-known figures from the promotional materials for the exhibit, such as those of Mao and his wife," Xu said. “We did that, and then we’re able to do the exhibit."

Xu was born in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, a region now mostly known for Beijing’s suppression of Uyghurs. His parents were Han Chinese transplants. His father was a soldier deployed in the region, and his mother had fled there from the even more destitute Gansu province; Xu grew up in extreme poverty. “I got through that time by drawing thousands of sketches," he said.

His earlier works, Xu said, provided the creative spark for his Ukraine project. Except this time, he wanted to capture a significant event as it was happening.

The day of the invasion, on Feb. 24, 2022, Xu, in his studio, found himself glued to news coverage of the war. He took screenshots of the scenes from Ukraine and started drawing.

That night, Xu drew a defiant Zelensky wearing a bulletproof vest. He put it out on X, Instagram, Facebook and the Chinese social-media platform Weibo, where it quickly gathered hundreds of thousands of views.

Encouraged, Xu carried on creating one Ukraine-themed drawing a day, and by the fifth day, he decided to do a visual diary of the war. He named it “Ukraine Every Day."

Since then, Xu scours the internet for news for hours as soon as he wakes up. He then starts drawing after walking his dog, a Shiba Inu called Cheddar. For a taste of home, he frequently makes his favorite dish, tender pieces of lamb and fragrant rice.

Right before the Russian invasion, Beijing declared that its friendship with Moscow had “no limits." The invasion took many Chinese by surprise and forced some soul-searching in policy circles over whether Beijing had been wise to align itself so closely with Russia. But as the war went on, China’s leadership pulled even closer. Beijing has provided an economic lifeline that has helped Moscow continue the war despite Western sanctions.

China’s loyalty to Russia hasn’t deterred Xu. By using social media to promote his art, he said he has tried to create a “modern artwork" that shows “in matters of right and wrong, the Chinese are not absent."

Paintbrushes in Xu’s studio. ‘I won’t stop the work until the end of the war,’ he says.

Beijing itself often delivers a mixed message by both aiding Russia and signaling humanitarian concern for Ukraine. On Chinese social media, the overriding tone is of support for Russia as a counterbalance to the West, but some Chinese have been able to express sadness for Ukraine’s suffering without getting censored. That has helped create room for Xu’s work.

A few times, former students of Xu’s have written to him, he said, and questioned why he was “on the opposite side of the government" with his Ukraine work. “How did I respond?" Xu said, “I just blocked them, all of them." The artist said he found it particularly infuriating when a fellow artist couldn’t seem to see beyond official narratives of an event.

His formula for staying out of trouble, he said, is to prioritize “reality" over “commentary." He lets his portraits, often based on news images, speak for themselves, and he posts them without adding comments of his own.

Still, his Weibo account in China has been blocked twice in the past three years, Xu said. The first time, he had posted a drawing of Xi Jinping inspired by the Chinese leader’s phone conversation with Zelensky in April 2023 when Xi called for dialogue to resolve the conflict.

The drawing, No. 426 in Xu’s war diary, was based on an official picture of Xi showing him smiling. The artist added words to the portrait from state media’s account of the leaders’ call.

Before he starts drawing each day, Xu walks his Shiba Inu, Cheddar, in his Queens neighborhood.

As is the norm, Beijing’s censors didn’t tell Xu why his account was restricted. “It shows any image related to the top leader is off limits," Xu said. It was two months before he was able to post on Weibo again.

Then, last July, Beijing’s censors again restricted access after Xu posted his digital recreation of an installation by some Russian artists. The drawing, No. 858 in Xu’s project, shows Article 29 of the Russian constitution written on a white banner that says everyone is guaranteed freedom of thought and speech and censorship is prohibited. But the words “guaranteed," “freedom of thought and speech" and “censorship" are blacked out, leaving visible only the words “everyone" and “prohibited."

That drawing, Xu said, probably made the censors think he was mocking China’s own censorship practices. This time, his access was restricted for six months. It was unblocked in January.

Nevertheless, “I won’t stop the work until the end of the war," Xu said. “I’ll keep finding the balance."