Woman in China stages public art protests over husband’s jailing and other social injustices

A mother of two in Fuyang, eastern China, is using protest art to seek the release from prison of her businessman husband, convicted of being a triad leader

She rolled giant inflatable balls proclaiming his innocence across a bridge, formed e-bikes into an SOS sign, and live-streams volunteers in a mock jail cell

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A university student, Feng Hanchen, wears a pair of paper handcuffs during the 24 hours he spent in a cage in Tang Jie's living room in Fuyang, China, as part of an art project to highlight social injustice. Photo: The Starving Artist Project

Published: 5:45pm, 24 Sep 2020Updated: 5:52pm, 24 Sep 2020

A mother of two in eastern China is so determined to make her jailed husband’s plight known that she is creating brazen public art happenings that have gone viral on social media.

Tang Jie has invited supporters to go on live-streamed, 24-hour hunger strikes inside a metal cage in her flat in the city of Fuyang, and early on the morning of September 17, she and a team of helpers unleashed five giant inflatable balls on a suspension bridge.

The desperate 34-year-old is demanding a new trial for Ge Linlin, a businessman convicted in December 2019 of being a triad leader and given a 22-year jail sentence.

Each of the balls they released was two metres in diameter and covered in words proclaiming Ge’s innocence. The spectacle of what look like outsize billiard balls rolling down one side of the bridge has been viewed 390,000 times in three days since the video was uploaded to Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter.

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Giant inflatable balls part of Chinese woman's ‘protest art’ seeking the release of jailed husband

Some viewers have left comments saying it reminds them of the faked scene of giant red-and-white anti-Lukashenko balls rolling down a street in Belarus that a Russian visual effects artist posted in August in protest at massive electoral fraud by the eastern European country’s authoritarian president. However, photographs taken during preparations for the stunt in Fuyang suggest the balls Tang and her group released were real.

Meanwhile, as part of a series of happenings Tang called “The Starving Artist Project”, 12 people, picked out of a total of 121 online applicants, took turns to spend 24 hours locked up in a cage in her living room with just a bed, a camp toilet and materials to make signs or artworks. While on public view via a live feed on Zoom and Bilibili, a popular Chinese video-sharing site, some used the opportunity to declare their support for Tang, while others protested against other social injustices.