Beijing (AFP)

Nurses and soldiers with raised fists, in front of a red flag that recalls the heyday of Maoism: in Beijing, an exhibition all to the glory of the ruling party heroizes the fight of the Chinese against the coronavirus.

Since the discovery of the epidemic in Wuhan (center) at the end of last year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has sought to model its fight against Covid-19, in a China that has practically eradicated the disease , if we are to believe the official figures.

At the National Museum of China, which overlooks the huge Tiananmen Square, an exhibition called "Union is strength" brings together nearly 200 works - paintings, sculptures, or calligraphy, in the purest style of socialist realism.

For several weeks, power gave an impression of hesitation, President Xi Jinping even disappearing from the media where he is usually omnipresent.

- Presidential missive -

But the exhibit focuses on the regime's response to the emergency.

Among the large canvases on display, a painting titled "Response to their letter to the secretary general" shows an ecstatic nurse reading a letter from Xi Jinping, secretary general of the CCP, to her colleagues.

In the center of the room, a sculpture shows life-size soldiers disembarking from a plane to come to the aid of the inhabitants. The uniforms evoke a scene from the Long March, one of the deeds of Maoist legend of the 1930s.

"Even if they do not work on the front line in the battle against Covid-19, the artists spare no effort to expose the heroic deeds of those who are there," greeted the English-language daily China Daily.

More moving, a painting represents a nurse, mask on the face, adjusting the full suit of a colleague.

Another close-up poster shows the face of the country's most famous medical expert, the high-profile Zhong Nanshan, with a tear streaming over his mask. Sober, the vignette simply presents him as a "Party Member".

Another hero is absent from the exhibition: Doctor Li Wenliang, a doctor from Wuhan who had given the alert at the end of December on the appearance of a new coronavirus, before being questioned by the police who accused him of spread rumors.

The death of the 34-year-old doctor, who died of the virus on February 7, gave rise to a rare but brief protest against the regime on social media.

The exhibition, which opened on August 1 for a period of two months, is not open to foreigners: access to the museum is only possible by reservation by giving a Chinese identity card number.

- A Covid ballet -

In front of a sparse audience, an equivocal painting entitled "Quarantine Zone" evokes the extreme surveillance under which China finds itself due to the fight against the virus: we see a man putting his hand through bars, behind a sign indicating " Please show your access card ".

Other cultural events illustrate the battle fought against the epidemic.

After eight months of closure, the Beijing National Opera reopened last week with a ballet titled "Flying in the Face of the Wind," which "expresses the people's respect and gratitude" to the medical staff, as Feng explained. Ying, director of the national ballet, at the CNS news agency.

In Wuhan, a room brings together emblematic objects of the epidemic in the cradle of the Covid-19, such as full suits covered with graffiti.

Contrary to the works gathered at the National Museum of China, an exhibition at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing brings together international artists with a much more offbeat vision.

The exhibition called "Meditations in Emergency Times" features a 2014 video by Frenchman Pierre Huyghe, "Untitled (Human Mask)", showing a monkey wandering in an empty restaurant in Japan after the Fukushima disaster.

© 2020 AFP