Song Ta/OCAT Shangha
- A Shanghai gallery took down a seven-hour video, called "Uglier and Uglier," that ranked women by appearance.
- The video was on display at OCAT Shanghai since April until it got pulled due to outrage.
- The gallery has apologized for including the video in its exhibition and has vowed to assess art more closely going forward.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
In response to backlash, a Shanghai gallery has taken down a seven-hour video in which an artist ranked women walking through a college campus "from the prettiest to the ugliest."
The video, called "Uglier and Uglier," was shot by artist Song Ta in 2012 and has been on display at a nonprofit gallery called OCAT Shanghai since April, CNN reported.
The women deemed prettiest by the artist appeared first, with the video over the course of its seven-hour runtime progressing to the women he deemed the ugliest.
"If you want to see the campus queen, you have to go to the museum as early as possible," Song said to describe the video, according to CNN. "Otherwise, when the dusk comes, it will become a living hell in this place."
Chinese social media users who watched the video were outraged, sharing a hashtag that's been used closed to 100 million times on Weibo, CNN reported. One Weibo user said the show curator should resign because he was "unable to distinguish between modern art and trash."
The intense internet outrage prompted curators to close the exhibition to the public and withdraw the video from it.
The gallery said in a statement that OCAT Shanghai "found that the concept of the work and the English title involved disrespect and offense to female friends, and the way the work was filmed was suspected of infringement."
It's unclear whether the women consented to be filmed and whether Song even asked.
"We would like to express our sincere apologies to all the audience and friends who were troubled, uncomfortable and hurt due to the adverse effects caused by this work on display in our museum," the gallery's statement said.
In a 2019 interview with Chinese media outlet BIE, Song said he had three assistants divide the women filmed into three categories: beauty, medium, and ugly. In each category, the women were again subdivided and ranked.
The video has been on display at other art institutions, including the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, CNN reported. That institution called Song and his work "unambiguously humorous," according to CNN. The UCCA did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.
Song also created a live rendition of the video in 2014, during which he had 44 women line up based on his perception of their beauty, the network said.
A biography for Song Ta says that his work is often "a reminder of natural law."
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