Latest news with #Badiucao
The Age
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
The dissident award-winning artist keeping a close watch on China
In an upstairs room of a Collingwood gallery hangs a line of colourful prints on a wall. It's only when you look closely that you see small areas of damage, evidence of their role in a troubled recent past. Dissident Chinese artist Badiucao points to a scratch on one and steps back. 'Some of the frames are even broken', he explains, saying it was a deliberate choice to leave them this way. These works were originally slated for display in 2018 at a doomed exhibition in Hong Kong. They now open his first Australian solo show, Disagree Where We Must. One of the prints features Joshua Wong, a key figure in Hong Kong's pro-democracy Umbrella Movement. At the time it was created, Badiucao was working anonymously. But three days before the Hong Kong show was due to open, 'the Chinese government found out my identity and took my relatives into the police station, ' he says. In response, he cancelled his show. A year later he shed his anonymity and finally revealed his face and identity to the world. The scratches and dings, he explains, help tell the story of how this group of works was hurriedly removed and hidden in the months and years after the show was cancelled. The Shanghai-born Badiucao, who now lives in Australia, contributes to this masthead and is a Walkley Award winner for his cartoons, has always used his art to critique mainland China's government, its policies, and historical wrongs. This ethos is on full display in Disagree Where We Must. Held in Collingwood's Goldstone gallery, a space opened by artist Nina Sanadze this year, the exhibition takes its title from the Labor government's stated approach to China: 'We will co-operate where we can, disagree where we must, but engage in our national interest.' A room at the back of the space is devoted to a video that first screened on billboards in Hong Kong earlier this year in a test of the limits of free speech in the wake of the sweeping National Security Law implemented in 2020. In the four-second clip, Badiucao silently mouths the words 'you must take part in revolution'.
Sydney Morning Herald
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
The dissident award-winning artist keeping a close watch on China
In an upstairs room of a Collingwood gallery hangs a line of colourful prints on a wall. It's only when you look closely that you see small areas of damage, evidence of their role in a troubled recent past. Dissident Chinese artist Badiucao points to a scratch on one and steps back. 'Some of the frames are even broken', he explains, saying it was a deliberate choice to leave them this way. These works were originally slated for display in 2018 at a doomed exhibition in Hong Kong. They now open his first Australian solo show, Disagree Where We Must. One of the prints features Joshua Wong, a key figure in Hong Kong's pro-democracy Umbrella Movement. At the time it was created, Badiucao was working anonymously. But three days before the Hong Kong show was due to open, 'the Chinese government found out my identity and took my relatives into the police station, ' he says. In response, he cancelled his show. A year later he shed his anonymity and finally revealed his face and identity to the world. The scratches and dings, he explains, help tell the story of how this group of works was hurriedly removed and hidden in the months and years after the show was cancelled. The Shanghai-born Badiucao, who now lives in Australia, contributes to this masthead and is a Walkley Award winner for his cartoons, has always used his art to critique mainland China's government, its policies, and historical wrongs. This ethos is on full display in Disagree Where We Must. Held in Collingwood's Goldstone gallery, a space opened by artist Nina Sanadze this year, the exhibition takes its title from the Labor government's stated approach to China: 'We will co-operate where we can, disagree where we must, but engage in our national interest.' A room at the back of the space is devoted to a video that first screened on billboards in Hong Kong earlier this year in a test of the limits of free speech in the wake of the sweeping National Security Law implemented in 2020. In the four-second clip, Badiucao silently mouths the words 'you must take part in revolution'.
South China Morning Post
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Chinese dissident artist's video shown on Hong Kong billboards; gallery says it was conned
At 7.30pm Hong Kong time on April 1, the dissident Chinese-Australian artist known as Badiucao revealed to his 55,500 Instagram followers that he had managed to pull off a stunt in the city. Advertisement His video posted to the social media platform shows the artist's face, with his signature untamed beard, appearing in black and white on two large outdoor billboards for about four seconds. His mouth moves silently as traffic and pedestrians stream past. The Instagram post explains what he is mouthing, in English: 'You must take part in revolution.' It is a line taken from a 1937 essay, 'On Practice', by late Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong that is also the title of his new graphic novel, written by Emmy-nominated journalist Melissa Chan. The short video clips, filmed from the street, are undated but the locations of the LED billboards are given: 33A Argyle Street and 6-12 Sai Yeung Choi South Street in Mong Kok – just about the busiest spots in Hong Kong's most densely populated district. The artist gave us false information in order to be admitted to the exhibition and I find it really low Art Innovation Gallery, Milan, Italy The Instagram post explains that Badiucao submitted the video work, titled Here and Now, under the pseudonym Andy Chou to the Milan-based Art Innovation Gallery for inclusion in its Hong Kong public art project 'Luminance'. Advertisement According to an earlier statement by the gallery, 'Luminance' was 'an immersive exhibition' timed to coincide with Art Basel Hong Kong, the international art fair that ran from March 26-30.
Yahoo
30-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Velshi Banned Book Club: ‘You Must Take Part in Revolution' by Melissa Chan and Badiucao
What could America look like in 2035? What could the world look like in 2035? Journalist Melissa Chan and activist artist Badiucao have explored the potential reality of 2035 in their new dystopian graphic novel: 'You Must Take Part in Revolution'. In the graphic novel, a proto-fascist America is at war with techno-authoritarian China. Taiwan is divided into two, and the threat of nuclear escalation looms over the globe. In the pages of this book, there is no good or bad government – the p
