The Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture opened over the weekend. Organized in two parts, half the biennale takes place on the Hong Kong side and is organized by the Hong Kong Institute of Architects while the other, taking place in Shenzhen, is put on by the city government. While the local government's involvement has helped turn this portion of the biennale into a big-budget affair with imaginative proposals and large venues much to the embarrassment of the considerably smaller Hong Kong side, it is now being seen to also undermine the possibility of open debate at the biennale. 

The French-Chinese artist Jiamin Hu and his wife, Marine Brossard, were asked to present a mural on the outside wall of a historic temple as part of the biennale's 'Art Making City' program, in which artists from around the world were invited to explore the notions of the street, home, public space, social production and more. As part of their piece, the pair included an empty blue chair as a tribute to Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner who died a political prisoner in state custody this year. Though the mural miraculously survived the first day of the exhibition, by nightfall, authorities had covered up the painting and arrested Hu and Brossard, whose present situation remains unknown.

For more on the Biennial, check out this review by Enid Tsui for the South China Morning Post.