The crypt of St John’s Waterloo feels serene and secure, a world away from the bustling city above. ‘I will spend the day here, because I feel safe here,’ Badiucao tells me. The dissident political cartoonist, who has been called ‘China’s Banksy’, is preparing to display his work on the crypt’s newly restored brick walls as part of an exhibition by exiled artists. ‘I don’t walk alone in any city. I don’t feel safe,’ he says.
I meet him soon after he flies in from Warsaw, where the Chinese government tried to close down his solo show, ‘Tell China’s Story Well’. Chinese diplomats pressured the Polish government and the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, which hosted him. ‘They said it would damage relations between Poland and China, that it would hurt the feelings of the Chinese people – as if I am not Chinese,’ he says.
When Yao Dongye, a senior Chinese diplomat, turned up at the museum uninvited and demandeda meeting, he was told he needed an appointment and sent away. The gallery expressed its ‘concern and astonishment’, and when Yao returned it presented him with a signed copy of the poster of the show. The poster depicted Xi Jinping devouring a child, an homage to Goya’s ‘Saturn Devouring His Son’. ‘Pay attention to his face when he sees the poster,’ says Badiucao, as he shows me a secretly filmed video of the encounter. Yao recoils from the poster as if it were something toxic. ‘Obviously he didn’t like it,’ Badiucao chuckles. ‘It’s not an easy image, it’s very brutal. But it’s reflecting what is happening in China. The father is eating his child because he is afraid he will uprise and replace him.’
The Chinese government tried and failed to stop earlier shows in Italy and the Czech Republic, but Badiucao says there was far more menace in the threats in Poland.
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