UMKC removes pro-democracy art with swastika following Chinese student objections
University of Missouri-Kansas City officials removed a piece of pro-Hong Kong democracy artwork from the hallway of the school’s Fine Arts Building this week, after Chinese students said it was offensive.
The work is an image that appears torn in two. One piece is red, with yellow stars arranged in a swastika and #CHINAZI written underneath. The other side is black, depicting a person wearing a yellow raincoat and gas mask with an umbrella on the side and #FREE HONG KONG written above.
Yellow is a symbol of solidarity for pro-Hong Kong supporters and the 2014 Umbrella Revolution — 79 days of sit-ins and street protests that were primarily student-led. Hong Kong protesters have adopted “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” as a pro-democracy song.
Chinese students complained Thursday evening to the art department and asked that the piece be taken down.
In an email to the art professor who displayed the work and Elijah Gowin, who chairs the Department of Art and Art History at UMKC, students said “many students have felt a sense of racism.”
The email also said that the majority of students interpreted the ideology depicted in the art “as derogatory. … Not only the swastika symbol, but the hashtag #CHINAZI also showed the extremely disrespectful attitude towards the country.”
Judy Zhang, a 2018 UMKC alum and still a member of the Chinese student group, said she first saw the art when it was posted on social media. She said she understands that Chinese students might “have totally different backgrounds” from other students on campus, “but calling us Chinazi and putting that in a public area is just too much.”
The red portion of the artwork — with the yellow star in the center— represents a distortion of the Chinese flag.
Art instructors often display student work throughout the building, Gowin said Friday morning. He said the piece, part of a collection of student work, had not been removed. He said feelings of students on both sides of the issue were being considered.
But The Star later learned that the challenged piece had been removed and a different art display put in its place.
A statement from the university Friday afternoon said, “UMKC is committed to the First Amendment and the right of free expression that it guarantees. As a public university, we do not censor political commentary based on the viewpoints expressed. We also are willing to listen to opposing viewpoints and provide opportunities for those to be heard as well.”
The statement also said that student artwork is displayed on three-week cycles and that the disputed piece was set for removal on Nov. 14.
“The removal was in no way a response to complaints about the work’s content,” the statement said.
The particular piece, for a class assignment on political poster art, represents the ongoing conflict in Hong Kong, where anti-government protesters have violently clashed with police in the streets for several months.
Hong Kong, while part of China, maintains democratic and economic freedoms not afforded to residents of the mainland. Protests began in June over a proposed law that would allow criminals to be extradited to to the mainland. The domestic conflict has become more violent in recent days and spread to universities.
The UMKC Chinese student email said their concerns were not so much related to the Hong Kong conflict but rather that the art work represented “hate speech.”
“Since UMKC offers students a friendly environment, students are able to freely express their opinions. Yet, I think it is still crucial to keep in mind that hate speech of any kind is not free speech,” the email said.
China is a top source of international students who study on U.S. campuses. Nearly 370,000 attended in 2018, including approximately 120 at UMKC.
The strife in Hong Kong has created ripples on other campuses.
At the University of California, Davis, students collecting signatures in support of the protests were accosted by classmates who grabbed their flag, broke the pole and threw it into the trash, according to a USA Today opinion piece. On the same campus, Chinese students urged university officials to cancel a rally on behalf of Hong Kong.
A pro-Hong Kong student activist at Yale said the university provided him security after he was harassed online by other students. At Columbia University, students at a talk by a Hong Kong protest leader stood and sang China’s national anthem in support of Beijing.
