Badiucao: Art Protest

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Address Poupětova 1, Praha 7
Entry CZK 0–210
Venue's website www.dox.cz…
Takes place during Badiucao: Made in China

As part of the program for Badiucao's “MADe in China” exhibition, DOX will screen the documentary “China's Artful Dissident”, followed by a talk by the artist and discussion.

The Chinese artist and activist, who goes by the pseudonym Badiucao, has captured the attention of the global public with his protest activities in recent years. Most recently, the foreign media, which has referred to Badiucao as the “Chinese Banksy”, reported on an exhibition of his work in Brescia, Italy, which the Chinese government attempted to cancel.

Badiucao took up protest art after watching a secretly filmed documentary about the Tiananmen Square massacre. He abandoned his studies and emigrated to Melbourne, Australia in 2009, where he worked as a primary school teacher and made his first satirical drawings. He worked anonymously for several years, appearing at public events wearing a mask. In 2018, he worked in Berlin as an assistant to Ai Weiwei, whom he considers his most important teacher, both artistically and ideologically.

Badiucao uses a variety of artistic techniques and media, but his most powerful tool for spreading protest art remains Twitter, which he began using after the repeated censorship of the Chinese social network Weibo. He has exhibited in Australia and the United States, and his work has been published by Amnesty International, Freedom House, BBC, CNN, and China Digital Times. In 2021, Garry Kasparov, president of the Human Rights Foundation, presented him with the Václav Havel Award for Creative Dissent.

Due to repeated threats against members of his family, Badiucao decided to reveal his true identity on June 4, 2019, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, during the screening of the documentary China's Artful Dissident.

China's Artful Dissident / Danny Ben-Moshe / Australia, China, France, USA 2019 / 60 min. – An anonymous Chinese artist is fighting against a totalitarian state that has already caught up with many of his colleagues. What can one person do against a seemingly omnipotent regime? The place of work of Badiucao, as the Chinese artist calls himself, is the social networks and streets of Australia, where he has fled from the Communist regime. His political drawings critiquing the Chinese government are spreading around the world thanks to his fans. To have a voice, a dissident must have no public name or face. Documentary filmmaker Danny Ben-Moshe came a few paces closer to him than others, yet Badiucao is careful not to reveal too much about himself so that the Chinese government cannot find him. If they did, he and his family would face severe punishment. But he is convinced that he could not live with himself were he to choose a comfortable life in silence.

Program:

  • 5:00 p.m. Screening of the documentary China's Artful Dissident
  • 6:00 p.m. Artist Talk: Lecture by the artist + discussion moderated by Kateřina Procházková (Sinopsis)

Videos

China's Artful Dissident  Official Trailer  0 5 1:17 15 ×

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