Chinese Artist Gao Zhen, U.S. Resident, Faces Trial for Satirizing Mao

One of Gao Zhen's most unsettling sculptures, "Mao's Guilt," depicts the founder of the People's Republic kneeling in remorse, cast in bronze. Another, "The Execution of Christ," places Jesus before a firing squad composed entirely of Maos. Gao completed both works by 2009. Today, he goes on trial for them.

Sanhe City Court in Hebei Province opened proceedings against the 69-year-old artist Monday morning behind closed doors, barring even his family from attending the hearing, in what human rights observers say violates Chinese procedural law. Gao, a U.S. permanent resident who has lived in New York since 2022, faces up to three years in prison on a charge of "insulting, defaming, or otherwise infringing on the reputation and honor of heroes and martyrs" under Article 299(1) of China's Criminal Law, a provision that did not take effect until March 2021.

The gap between the artworks and the statute is not incidental. Prosecutors formally indicted Gao on June 20, 2025, on the basis of 118 pieces confiscated from his studio, all created between 2005 and 2009. That retroactive application is what has alarmed international legal experts: Gao is, according to CNN's reporting, the first Chinese artist known to be detained under the 2021 law.

Police detained Gao on August 26, 2024, during what was meant to be a brief family visit. He had been days from boarding a return flight to New York when about 30 officers stormed his studio in Yanjiao Town, Hebei, according to his brother Gao Qiang. A follow-up raid yielded 118 confiscated works. Gao has since refused to plead guilty or accept a negotiated three-year sentence, and has retained Mo Shaoping, the human rights lawyer who previously defended Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, to represent him at trial.

The case has dragged through three postponements, from September 2025 to December, then to March 10, before a pre-trial hearing on March 24 set today's date. The delays have compounded a medical emergency: Gao, who will turn 70 in May, suffers from lumbar spine disease, knee effusion, and chronic hives, and fainted in detention in September 2025. Advocates say inadequate food provision at the Sanhe City Detention Center has worsened his condition.

His wife, Zhao Yaliang, and their seven-year-old son, an American citizen, remain under exit bans that have kept the family separated since his arrest.

The artworks were never made in abstraction. Gao Zhen and Gao Qiang's father was labeled a counterrevolutionary in 1968 and died in state detention. "Our father's death was a devastating disaster for our family," Gao told Southern People Weekly in 2010. "We constantly worried that our mother would take her own life, but she raised us with an extraordinary resilience that few could compare to." The brothers channeled that history into decades of provocative work, including "Miss Mao," which depicted the Chairman in large-breasted, Pinocchio-nosed sculptural form. For most of his career, Gao escaped serious punishment by staging invite-only exhibitions.

That tactic lost its protection as Xi Jinping extended what Chinese Communist Party doctrine calls the fight against "historical nihilism," which the Party defines as any critical treatment of its leaders or official history. The 2021 criminal code amendment that ensnared Gao was part of the same campaign that produced government hotlines for citizens to report ideologically suspect historical commentary. Gao's case has drawn more than 20,000 petition signatures, a joint letter from the Human Rights Foundation, and public support from Ai Weiwei. Gao Qiang has posted a photograph of his detained brother on Facebook every day since the arrest.

The Sanhe City Court has not responded to requests for comment.