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CHINESE CULTURE:Artists Gao Qiang and Gao Zhen lost their father to China’s Cultural Revolution, and their work is an attempt to get China to face up to its difficult past and the truth behind its most famous leader, Mao Zedong, writes CLIFFORD COONANin Beijing

GAO QIANG IS slightly out of breath when he arrives at the studio he shares with his older brother Zhen in Beijing’s trendy 798 art district. En route to the interview, China’s most controversial contemporary artists crashed their car, and Qiang had to stay behind to sort out the paperwork. The younger Gao apologises for being late, and then, almost casually, he takes Mao Zedong’s head out of a plastic bag and attaches it to the corpulent, kneeling body of modern China’s founding father.