The Stars Art Group (Xing Xing)

About The Stars Art Group (Xing Xing)

On 27 September 1979, in the political thaw after Mao's death, some two dozen largely self-taught artists hung paintings, woodcuts and carvings on the railings outside China's national art museum in Beijing. Organised by Huang Rui and Ma Desheng, they called themselves Xing Xing, the Stars, a name widely read as a claim for individual voices. Police removed the show two days later. On 1 October the artists and supporters marched under banners demanding political democracy and artistic freedom, and the exhibition reopened in Beihai Park that November.

Wang Keping carved wooden heads with blocked mouths and eyes, as in Silence (1978), and a Buddha-like figure of Mao; Ma Desheng cut stark woodcuts; Huang Rui designed covers for the unofficial literary journal Today. A second, officially permitted exhibition followed in 1980. By the mid-1980s many members, including Ai Weiwei, Wang Keping and Li Shuang, had moved abroad.