Doors to Freedom: Art Basel Miami Installation to Highlight Persecuted Artists

Seven Defiant Artists

Every artist featured in Doors to Freedom has been harassed, jailed, or exiled for refusing to remain silent.

• The Gao Brothers (China): Through politically charged performance, photography, and sculpture, these brothers confront the Chinese Communist Party. Their courageous defiance led to Gao Zhen’s ongoing imprisonment in 2024. (The New York Times, BBC, CNN, The Guardian)

• Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara (Cuba): A Cuban performance artist and leader of the San Isidro Movement, Alcántara has been imprisoned since 2021 for his challenge to state censorship. (TIME, Hyperallergic)

• Rayma Suprani (Venezuela): Forced into exile for her sharp satire and infamous ‘Salud’ political cartoon, Suprani continues to give voice to the silenced. (The Guardian)

• Song Byeok (North Korea): Once a propaganda painter for the North Korean regime, Song’s escape and subsequent art now reveal the grim state-controlled reality of his former country. (BBC, Reuters, National Review)

• Azza Abo Rebieh (Syria): Rebieh’s stark etchings and multimedia works transform personal testimony into art, documenting the devastating human toll of Syria’s civil war. (The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar)

• Pedro X. Molina (Nicaragua): An exiled cartoonist, Molina wields sharp satire and commentary as instruments of civic resistance against the Ortega-Murillo regime. (TIME)

• Zehra Doğan (Turkey): Kurdish artist and journalist, Doğan spent nearly three years in prison for “spreading terrorist propaganda” following her 2016 painting that depicted Nusaybin, a Kurdish-majority town in Turkey, reduced to rubble by the Turkish military. (DW, Artnet News)

Doors to Freedom stands as a powerful reminder that freedom is the prerequisite for all art. Stay connected with HRF’s Art in Protest program and be a part of this work: connect us with galleries and dissident artists, collaborate creatively, or sustain the program through donations or sponsorships to bring dissident voices to the global stage.