{"id":1006903,"date":"2021-11-13T10:13:33","date_gmt":"2021-11-13T15:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1006903"},"modified":"2021-11-13T10:13:36","modified_gmt":"2021-11-13T15:13:36","slug":"chinese-dissident-artist-badiucao-defies-beijing-in-italian-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/chinese-dissident-artist-badiucao-defies-beijing-in-italian-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Dissident Artist Badiucao Defies Beijing in Italian Show"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fchinese-dissident-artist-badiucao-defies-beijing-in-italian-show%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1006903&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p class=\"subheading\">(AFP) Exhibiting a torture instrument as an innocent rocking chair, Chinese dissident artist Badiucao mocks the propaganda of Beijing in a new show \u2014 while appropriating its codes.<\/p>\n<p>Defying calls from the Chinese government to cancel it, the northern Italian city of Brescia is hosting the first international solo exhibition by the 35-year-old artist and exile from China who lives in Australia.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"><\/figure>\n<p>Badiucao\u2019s works are \u201cfull of anti-Chinese lies\u201d that \u201cjeopardise the friendly relations between China and Italy\u201d, charged Beijing\u2019s embassy in Rome in a letter sent last month to Brescia\u2019s town hall.<\/p>\n<p>But the city stood its ground.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNone of us in Brescia, neither in the city council nor among the citizens, had the slightest doubt about this exhibition going ahead,\u201d Deputy Mayor Laura Castelletti told AFP.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p>Brescia, known for its Roman ruins, has a long tradition of welcoming dissidents, painters and writers, in the \u201cdefence of artistic freedom\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n<p>The last was in 2019, with the works of Kurdish artist Zehra Dogan, who spent nearly three years in jail in Turkey.<\/p>\n<p>The new show, \u201cChina is (not) near \u2014 works of a dissident artist\u201d, which opened Friday, denounces political repression in China and the country\u2019s censorship of the origins of the coronavirus, two explosive subjects for Beijing.<\/p>\n<p>The exhibit, whose title is an allusion to a famous Italian film from 1967, \u201cChina Is Near\u201d, runs until February 13 at the Santa Giulia museum.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with AFP, Badiucao \u2014 who has been called \u201cthe Chinese Banksy\u201d \u2014 said he was \u201cvery happy and proud\u201d that the city \u201chad the courage to say \u2018no\u2019 to China to defend fundamental rights.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B3\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p>\u2013 \u2018Death threats\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to use my art to expose the lies, to expose the problems of the Chinese government, to criticise the Chinese government, however on the other hand it\u2019s also celebrating the Chinese people, for how brave Chinese people are\u2026 even when they have been subjected to this very harsh environment with an authoritarian government,\u201d Badiucao said, speaking in English.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<div id=\"attachment_18732218\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" readability=\"38\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/italy-dissident-chinese-artist-artist-badiucao-sits-torture-chair-of-exhibition-santa-giulia-museum.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-18732218\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/italy-dissident-chinese-artist-artist-badiucao-sits-torture-chair-of-exhibition-santa-giulia-museum.jpg\" alt=\"The Associated Press\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Artist Badiucao sits in a torture chair, part of his exhibition in the Santa Giulia Museum, in Brescia, Saturday, Nov. 13, 2021.&nbsp; (AP Photo\/Felice Calabro\u2019)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Plans for a Hong Kong show in 2018 fell through after pressure on the artist and his entourage, said the bespectacled Badiucao, who sports a long, shaggy beard.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe national security police went to intimidate my family in Shanghai,\u201d he said, adding they threatened to \u201csend officers\u201d to the opening if the exhibit were held.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B4\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p>Among the works exhibited in Brescia that have provoked the ire of Beijing is a famous image of Chinese President Xi Jinping merged with the face of Carrie Lam, Hong Kong\u2019s chief executive, to illustrate the erosion of self-rule in the former British colony.<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese Communist Party \u201cthinks that all free artists are its enemies, that\u2019s why it hates me so much,\u201d said Badiucao, who added that he receives \u201cdaily death threats\u201d on social media.<\/p>\n<p>Due to heavy censorship, he said he only learned decades later as a university student studying law in China about the government\u2019s brutal 1989 crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square.<\/p>\n<p>He decided to dedicate himself to art, moving to Australia in 2009 and only revealing his identity publically on its 30th anniversary a decade later.<\/p>\n<p>Another of his works depicts 64 watches painted with the artist\u2019s own blood, representing those given to Chinese soldiers, according to Badiucao, as a reward for their participation in the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown.<\/p>\n<p>The exhibition also pays tribute to \u201cTank Man\u201d, the unknown man wearing a white shirt and carrying two plastic shopping bags who stood up to advancing tanks.<\/p>\n<p>In a nod to current events, the tanks remodelled by Badiucao are topped by balls resembling the Covid-19 virus under a microscope.<\/p>\n<p>\u2013 Sidestepping censors \u2013<\/p>\n<p>Hung on one of the museum\u2019s walls are pages from a diary of a resident of Wuhan, epicentre of the pandemic, who managed to circumvent the censorship to recount his daily life at the start of the confinement.<\/p>\n<p>The dissident said there is no doubt Beijing is responsible for the pandemic, alleging that it failed to heed warnings over the coronavirus\u2019 first appearance in Wuhan in late 2019.<\/p>\n<p>The exhibition \u201chas no intention of offending the Chinese people or Chinese culture and civilisation\u201d, the president of the Brescia Museums Foundation, Francesca Bazoli, said.<\/p>\n<p>In showing these works, she added, \u201cwe support freedom of expression\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(AFP) Exhibiting a torture instrument as an innocent rocking chair, Chinese dissident artist Badiucao mocks the propaganda of Beijing in a new show \u2014 while appropriating its codes. Defying calls &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1006903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}