China presses Brescia to cancel unwelcome exhibition. The city says no

No to China ’s interference in Brescia’s cultural programming. The City Council’s stance against the Chinese embassy, which has lobbied to have the exhibition China (not) is Near, a solo show by Chinese artist Badiucao (Shanghai, 1986), curated by Elettra Stamboulis and scheduled from Nov. 13, 2021 to Feb. 13, 2022 at the Santa Giulia Museum, cancelled, is firm. According to a report in the Brescia Newspaper, in fact, the Asian country’s embassy sent a letter to Mayor Emilio Del Bono complaining about the event. “The works in the exhibition,” the missive reads, “are full of anti-Chinese lies, distort facts, spread false information, mislead the understanding of the Italian people and seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people, endangering friendly relations between China and Italy.”

Badiucao, known as the “Chinese Banksy,” is a dissident artist, highly critical and sarcastic of the Chinese regime, currently in exile in Australia. The exhibition itinerary of the show will trace Badiucao’s artistic activity, from his early days to his most recent works, which arose in response to the health crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. Internationally established 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), Badiucao 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 thus 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 commitment 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 its blog, social media, and organized media campaigns, Badiucao from Australia has carried on its resistance activities, becoming the only channel unfiltered by government control capable of broadcasting the stories of Wuhan’s citizens during the 2020 lockdown.

Despite the Chinese protest, the exhibition will go ahead: Mayor Del Bono has already let it be known that Badiucao’s staff will not be cancelled, drawing bipartisan applause from political forces. In addition, Fratelli d’Italia’s group leader in the Foreign Affairs Committee, Andrea Delmastro delle Vedove, has written a note together with his party colleague Giangiacomo Calovini, a city councilor, in which they call for “returning to sender any undue pressure”: “we do not accept,” the two FdI members write, “any censorship by the Chinese Embassy, freedom of thought and expression are the salt of democracy.” This is not the first time China has intervened to have an exhibition cancelled in the West: the latest case was the Castle of the Dukes of Brittany, which halted a collaboration with the Hohhot Museum in China because of pressure from Chinese authorities for an exhibition on Genghis Khan in 2020.

Image: Badiucao, Xi’s going on a bear

China presses Brescia to cancel unwelcome exhibition. The city says no

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