He Xie

The Porcelain Banquet

One thousand individual crabs, hand-crafted from porcelain, form the body of this work. The medium carries deep historical weight; in various Chinese dynasties, artists utilized jade, bamboo, or onyx to sculpt similar crustaceans. Here, the choice of porcelain connects the delicate, fragile nature of the material to the political fragility of the artist's situation.

The piece emerged from a period of intense friction in Shanghai. In 2010, following demolition orders for a newly constructed studio, an ironic banquet was organized. While friends and supporters gathered to feast on river crabs, the artist was placed under house arrest, prevented from attending his own celebration. The studio was subsequently demolished in early 2011 without warning.

Linguistic Subversion

The title, He Xie, functions through a linguistic double meaning. While literally translating to “river crab,” the phrase is a homonym for “harmony.” This phonetic overlap alludes to the tension between the Chinese government and its citizens regarding the maintenance of a “harmonious society.”

In contemporary digital culture, particularly within China, the term has been adopted as slang to reference censorship. The porcelain crabs thus act as symbols of a larger struggle for transparency and the persistence of individual voices against systemic control.