Film screening: Welcome to Babel

James Bradley's documentary Welcome to Babel follows renowned Chinese-Australian artist Jiawei Shen as he undertakes an extraordinary and monumental artwork that he says gives meaning to his whole life. This former Red Guard, still famous in China for painting one of the most famous images of the Cultural Revolution, ‘Standing Guard For The Great Motherland’, is creating a fantastic parable of the history of Communism in the style that has established him as one of the world’s great history painters.

Epic in concept and scale and painted over 7 years, his ‘Tower of Babel’ masterpiece is an enormous 4 panel work of 130 square meters and 7.5 meters in height. It depicts over 400 famous and infamous characters including politicians, soldiers, scientists, artists, writers and filmmakers who were won over by the utopian vision of the Communist movement, as well as many forgotten people who tragically lost their lives to Revolution. It also includes remixes of over 100 iconic artworks by left wing artists including Picasso, Matisse, Léger, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in an immersive artwork that totally surrounds the viewer in his vast 3-story studio in Bundeena, just outside of Sydney.

As Jiawei’s masterpiece progresses, he and his artist wife Lan Wang tell their own stories of lives shared with millions of others in Mao’s China through the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution, before the traumatic events of June 1989 in Tiananmen Square saw them settle in Australia.

Welcome To Babel puts an intimate and human face to an extraordinary couple and the story of their generation in China and Australia. And asks whether the present can learn from the past.

Free event, booking essential.