Male who performed sex in public as an art exhibition sentenced to 1 year of hard labor
Summary: At Beijing’s Songzhuang [art district], 57-year-old artist Cheng Li performed sexual behavior as an art exhibition, was taken away by police, and was sentenced to 1 year of re-education through labor. Re-education Through Labor Administration Committee documents show that “Cheng Li’s engaged in an obscene performance in the nude, attracting many onlookers, creating chaos at the scene”, establishing that he has created a public disturbance. Cheng Li’s lawyer is already in the process of applying for administrative reconsideration. Netizens engaged in intense discussion with regards to whether this was art or obscene.
[...] From the photos of the scene that circulated online, it can be seen that while a naked Cheng Li and a female engaged in sexual performance, there were many people wearing serious expressions observing or taking photographs around them. Cheng Li’s lawyer Wang Zhenyu told this reporter that Cheng Li told him after the incident that there were two purposes for this performance art: One is to satirize the current situation where art has been overly commercially packaged, and the second is to call for people to not demonize normal sexual behavior or think of it as ugly. What more, this exhibition only invited a specific range/field of artists and was not open to the public. [...]
