Image from China’s Artful Dissident. Badiucao is inspired by Tank Man, the famous lone protestor. Source: ABC.
The ABC will mark the 30th anniversary of the massacre of student protesters in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989 by airing China’s Artful Dissident, a documentary about Chinese-Australian protest artist Badiucao.
Born and raised in Shanghai, but based in Australia for the last 10 years, Badiucao has become famous internationally for his street art and digital protests. These often make use of propaganda imagery to highlight China’s human rights violations and abuses of power. Rampant censorship means that all mentions of the Tiananmen events have been eradicated from Chinese history and media.