Beijing Art Student Punished for Putting Dildo on Flagpole

Ge Yulu, the art student who managed to fool both Baidu Maps and local residents into naming a Beijing road after him, was disciplined last month by his school, the Central Academy of Fine Arts, China’s most prestigious art university. Online commentators initially suspected it had to do with his infamous road-naming shenanigans, but rumor has it that the punishment has to do with another infraction — earlier this year, Ge placed a dildo on a campus flagpole:

Ge clarified that the punishment had nothing to do with the road sign he put up, which tricked Google and Baidu Maps into labelling it as Ge Yulu, or Ge Yu Road. He told Legal Evening News (link in Chinese), “The road sign is a piece in my graduation exhibition; the school won’t punish me because of that.”

An anonymous graduate told the Legal Evening News that in March or April, Ge did indeed place an adult product on top of a flagpole. Pictures of a WeChat conversation detailing the deed have been circulating in online discussion. According to one source, the school didn’t find out about the dildo until a few days after it was mounted, and their security detail had a hard time removing it. Alas, the dildo is gone, but it will live on in grainy pictures forever.

One of Ge Yulu’s counterfeit street signs

The incident has an unexpected twist ending: all of this online attention may end up netting Ge a full scholarship for graduate study in Italy. Though the news has yet to be verified, according to Twitter user @firefly0139, Brera Academy in Milan welcomes Ge Yulu for fully-funded graduated studies:

如果谁认识葛宇路同学，麻烦转告他一声，意大利当代艺术领域的最高学府米兰布雷拉国立美术学院欢迎他来深造，学校和意视窗愿意为他提供包括语言学费在内的全额奖学金—布雷拉这样的怪咖学长还挺多的：做大便罐头那个Piero Manzoni，还有“一刀流”的那个Lucio Fontana。 pic.twitter.com/eIQxbIupVI

— Me?lissa (@firefly0139) August 3, 2017

Besides putting dildos on flagpoles and erecting fake road signs in his free time, Ge also has been known to sit in front of security cameras and watch them for hours:

Quite the diverse practice.

Image source: Sina Weibo