Lockdown Diary 
Gao Jie
Sep 09 - Sep23, 2022
London | Online

Tabula Rasa Gallery is pleased to present a series of highly relevant drawings by the Shanghai-based artist Gao Jie in our London space from 09 September to 23 September 2022.

On 31 March this year, Gao Jie's last view of the outside world was his beslippered left foot withdrawing from the doormat as he pulled the front door shut. For 20 million people, what began as a 4-day lockdown was repeatedly extended to an eventual length of two months, now known as the Shanghai Lockdown of 2022. We have this very personal image because Gao Jie made a drawing of it that night and carried on making hundreds of drawings collectively known as the artist's Shanghai Lockdown Diary.

Some of these drawings reflect Gao's personal experiences, while most bear historical witness to social media events people in Shanghai and beyond tracked and shared obsessively during the lockdown. Some of these images appear absurdist such as one showing a college student being fed noodles through a wire fence. Others veer to the macabre, such as the one in which two hazmat suits appear to be bashing a dog. We also have a few heart-wrenching images, such as that infamous unzipping of a bodybag containing a frail person still breathing who was nearly sent to the crematorium alive. Many of these events have burned into China's national consciousness, and many viewers will instantly recognise Gao's simple line drawings.

Gao Jie was compelled to make these drawings because he was "driven to hysteria" as a social media witness to these events. It is the same human reaction to do something that made many of Shanghai's tragedies trending social media posts in the first place. Furthermore, as an artist, Gao is privileged to present these tragic memories publicly and thereby create another historical record, a hand copy of events that many still remember as fresh as yesterday. Sadly, digitally speaking, many of these traumatic experiences as social media posts "no longer exist," which means they "never happened" as far as official records are concerned.

Gao is the first to admit these drawings may appear artistically simple to a professional audience. He had to fight the urge to make them less direct and more artistic. He recognises the difficulty among Chinese artists to participate in public life or social debates, though his Lockdown Diary is such a sincere effort. Like all those who relied on human creativity during trying times, Gao's Lockdown Diary is also an act of faith in truth and love, in reasonableness and compassion, in human dignity and in this too shall pass.


In addition to the presentation of 58 works at our London space, we have also initiated an Archival Platform Online, where we juxtaposedocumentary images of actual events witnessed by the artist with his drawings. Alongside texts by Gao Jie, we hope this will offer the viewers, who are mostly absent from these events, an “artist’s perspective” in understanding Gao Jie’s works. The platform will be updated continuously until the end of the exhibition. 

Gao Jie (b.1979) is a conceptual artist and a painter, he currently lives and works in Shanghai. His practice followed a skeptical and philosophical interrogation of the world, with a constant focus on the relations between existence and spirits of modern people , individual and society as well as illusion and reality.

Some recent solo exhibitions include: Faux Art History, SNAP, School of Visual Arts shanghai platform, Shanghai (2019); GAO Jié People’s Publishing House, U26, Shanghai (2018); Art4A.I., Bannister Gallery, Rhode Island College, USA (2017); How much is Free art worth?, Modulab Gallery, Metz, France (2014). Recent major group exhibitions include: Rituals in Rituals of the Future, YUZ Museum, Shanghai (2021); How Now, How Art Museum, Shanghai (2019); Rituals in Rituals of the Future, Ming Contemporary Art, Shanghai (2018); Being Information, SSSSTART, project space of Start Museum, Shanghai (2017), just to name a few..