Badiucao,with something on his mind.Credit:Badiucao
“My experience in China assured me that the power of the cartoon is so mighty that that government would just hunt me down,harass my family,everything they can to stop me from drawing. If it is all for nothing,then why are they doing it?”
The perfect example,he says,is the viral meme of portraying Chinese President Xi Jinping as a cartoonish Winnie the Pooh,a meme he played a role in spreading and popularising. It’s banned on the Chinese internet.
“China stepping in,deciding to censor it … their overreaction just brought in more curiosity from the world,” he says. “To practise freedom of speech on a daily basis is a pillar of our society. It’s not about changing people’s opinion in one frame. I think cartooning is more about starting a conversation. You pose a question,you make people think.
“Viewing the thing from a different perspective,that’s how the conversation happens,and that’s how you keep a society healthy and dynamic.”
Badiucao,35,has a tattoo of the iconic “Tank Man” image from the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre on his drawing arm. He studied law at university,where he was shocked to discover the suppressed truth about the events,and started sketching satirical doodles. He moved to Australia in 2009,and now turns his hand to everything from street art to high art.
His favoured art style is itself a political statement. It traces back to early 20th century German graphic artist Kathe Kollwitz,whose boldly drawn,populist,working-class images were redeployed in propaganda for Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Badiucao wants to reclaim this style for its original intent:to advocate for poor people,to criticise the powerful. He also likes to mimic Chinese traditional painting styles – again,to claim it for the people instead of the state.
ForThe Age,as possibly the country’s first Chinese-Australian editorial cartoonist,Badiucao hopes to use the role to advocate for minorities,migrants,for those under-represented in the national conversation. But he won’t shy away from pure political comment – such as his recent play on the range of RAT results:positive,negative and invalid,with Scott Morrison in the latter role.