Late last month, Chinese citizens took up a creative means of protest over the nation’s strict “zero-COVID” policy. In a place with little tolerance for large public demonstrations, protesters have been holding up blank pieces of paper. Their ingenuity inspired a local artist Yolanda He Yang to stage a public art demonstration to subtly communicate their dissent.
Yang was born and raised in mainland China and watching the protests from afar gave her a visceral feeling. Every piece of skin and muscle in her body was jittery upon viewing images from home. And when asked about the protests, she often felt like she couldn’t speak. “That’s when I realized that reading all of this news from my home was affecting me in a very intense way,” Yang explained.