Brescia, here's the exhibition China tried to thwart. Badiucao's solo exhibition

The exhibition that China has been trying to thwart has started in Brescia: it is the solo show of dissident artist Badiucao (Shanghai, 1986), a Chinese man in exile in Australia. Entitled China is Not Near. Badiucao - works by a dissident artist, the exhibition runs from Nov. 13, 2021 to Feb. 13, 2022 at the Museo di Santa Giulia in Brescia and is Badiucao’s first exhibition in Italy. In addition, the exhibition, curated by Elettra Stamboulis, constitutes the flagship event of the Festival of Peace, organized by the City and Province of Brescia from November 12 to 28, 2021. The event, now in its 4th edition, boasts the Patronage of the European Parliament and Amnesty International.

The exhibition traces Badiucao’s artistic activity from his beginnings to his most recent works, which came about in response to the health crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. Badiucao has established himself on the international stage thanks to social media, with which he spreads his art around the world (his twitter account @badiucao is followed by more than 80 thousand people), and constantly challenges the Chinese government and censorship. His artistic-political vocation was born in 2007 when, a law student at Shanghai University, he saw the documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace, an underground film directed by Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon about the Tiananmen Square protests. The artist develops a firm resolve to speak out on the front lines against all forms of ideological and moral control exercised by political power, in favor of the transmission of an unplagiarized historical memory. Indeed, his political engagement is realized in the creation of participatory campaigns, posters in public places, illustrations and online activities, often constructed with a visual language that ironically evokes the pop spirit of communist propaganda, tracing its graphic style, colors and tones. Through his blog, social media and organized communication campaigns, Badiucao from Australia has carried on his own resistance activities, becoming the only channel unfiltered by government control capable of broadcasting the stories of Wuhan’s citizens during the 2020 lockdown. In 2020 he was awarded the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent by the Human Rights Foundation, intended for artists who creatively expose the deceptions of dictatorships.

In its various sections, the exhibition covers a variety of themes: from pictorial and multi-material works bearing witness to human rights violations to the censorship inflicted on Chinese citizens on Covid-19, from the repression of dissent in Myanmar during the military coup of 2021 to the theme of forced cultural assimilation of the Uighurs, to a detailed artistic account of the protests in recent years that have seen people in Hong Kong fighting back against the government’s political line in Hong Kong.

“The work of mapping dissident artists, political activists and visually militant artists,” says curator Elettra Stamboulis, “continues with this exhibition project: at the center is the poetics of Chinese artist collaborating with the milk tea movements. The Milk tea Alliance consists of Net Citizens who operate in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and Burma. They are among the originators and promoters of the most important demonstrations for democracy and human rights in the Far East, and Badiucao is their artist.”

“It is a great day today for human rights and contemporary art,” comments Francesca Bazoli, President of Fondazione Brescia Musei. “Fondazione Brescia Musei continues today the path launched two years ago to witness the attention to human rights issues represented in their urgency, thanks to the work of young artists still little known to the international community and who make their art a gesture of sharing and denunciation. In this way, the Brescia Musei Foundation testifies to its vocation to social issues, and to this intangible heritage, constituted by the culture of citizenship, which is one of the most important and significant attributes of the territory of which the Foundation itself, with the management of its museums and cultural activities, is an emanation and plastic extrinsication.”

“With the first solo exhibition of the Chinese artist Badiucao at the Santa Giulia Museum,” says deputy mayor and culture councillor Laura Castelletti, “Brescia also confirms itself as a reference of international importance in the field of contemporary forms, languages and messages. We are therefore proud to present the exhibition ”China (not) is Near,“ a proposal that consistently continues the thread started last year with the courageous and exciting solo exhibition dedicated to the Kurdish artist Zehra Dogan, and that confirms the awareness with which Brescia, together with Bergamo, will assume the title of Italian Capital of Culture in 2023.”

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“This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Filipino journalist Maria Ressa and Russian reporter Dmitry Muratov ’for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a prerequisite for democracy and lasting peace,’” says Roberto Cammarata, president of the Brescia City Council. “This is the highest confirmation of the motivations that led the City of Brescia and the Brescia Musei Foundation two years ago to share the opportunity to launch, in the context of the Festival of Peace, a path aimed at investigating the relationship between contemporary art and power, between artistic creativity, freedom of expression and peace. An extraordinary opportunity for reflection and confrontation, through the cues offered by artistic language, on fundamental issues such as the protection of human rights, new forms of dissidence and nonviolent revolt against illiberal regimes, and the relationship between truth and politics in the world of so-called post-truth. It is the responsibility of every democratic institution to give voice, space and recognition to those who courageously use the tools at their disposal to denounce the violation of fundamental rights by being megaphones for freedom, even at the cost of losing their own. A responsibility that our institutions have decided not to shirk.”

“Brescia has chosen, in the context of a project of such depth and articulation as the Festival of Peace,” Mayor Emilio Del Bono stresses, “to open wide to Badiucao the doors of the city’s main museum, because his powerful work, urgent and grounded in the stylistic features of mass culture, knows how to speak to society and in particular to young people, who never as in this period show us, with their strength and their fragility, that they are interlocutors deserving of all our attention.”

During the first weekend of the exhibition’s opening, the artist will present two performances with free admission by reservation inside the Santa Giulia Museum. Saturday, Nov. 13, 2021 at 4 p.m. Forgotten, an interactive performance, will be held, which Badiucao dedicates to all the children who are victims of wars, not only past but also present, conflicts, indifference and oppression. On Sunday, Nov. 14, 2021 at 3 p.m., the performance Tiger Chair Story Time will feature the artist interacting with one of the exhibited works to the limit of his physical endurance; the work is dedicated to all the people who suffered and lost their lives during the Wuhan lockdown in China. On Wednesday, November 17 at 5:30 p.m. instead, Fondazione Brescia Musei has organized a talk on the very topic of art and human rights, open to the public, at the Santa Giulia Museum Auditorium. It will be an opportunity to explore the topic with artist Badiucao starting from the experiences of “Progetto Genesi” and Fondazione Brescia Musei: a dialogue on the value of the link between exhibition and educational activities with the aim of providing permanent education on human rights that will involve the president of Fondazione Brescia Musei, director Stefano Karadjov together with Clarice Pecori Giraldi, curator of Collezione Genesi, and Ilaria Bernardi, curator of Progetto Genesi.

With this new project, Fondazione Brescia Musei, together with the Municipality of Brescia, continues the path begun in 2019 with the exhibition Avremo anche giorni migliori. Zehra DoÄŸan. Works from Turkish Prisons, in which the Kurdish artist, through the exhibition of about sixty unpublished works, intersected and intertwined her personal story with the dramatic political events of the most pressing current events, highlighting the relationship between contemporary works and human rights. After the success in Brescia, a selection of Zehra DoÄŸan’s works were exhibited in 2021 at PAC - Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by Skira and a program of in-depth activities for adult audiences, families and schools, curated by Fondazione Brescia Musei itself and in collaboration with the Municipality of Brescia.

Brescia, here's the exhibition China tried to thwart. Badiucao's solo exhibition

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