Ukrainian Artist Banned from Xinjiang Biennale (and He’s Not Alone)

Nikita Kadan has been forced to withdraw from the 2014 Xinjiang Biennale, titled “New Art on the Silk Road,” Artleaks reports. The Ukrainian artist had been invited to participate and submitted his project Procedure Room (2009-10), which pictures police torture in the Ukraine on a set of decorative plates.

This didn’t go down well with the XinJiang government, who objected to the “political issues” in the work. ArtLeaks’ source estimates that a staggering 80 artists, out of the 120 international artists originally invited to participate in the exhibition, have since been turned down.