Wuheqilin

Wuheqilin
Wuheqilin
Born	Fu Yu (付昱); 22 July 1988 (age 35); Shangzhi, Heilongjiang, China
Nationality	China
Occupation	Artist

Fu Yu (Chinese: 付昱; born 22 July 1988), known professionally as Wuheqilin (Chinese: 乌合麒麟; pinyin: Wū Hé Qí Lín; lit. 'Rabble Qilin') is a Chinese illustrator and political cartoonist. His hometown is Harbin. He claims himself as a "Wolf warrior painter" and is famous in China for his artwork Peace Force (Chinese: 《和平之师》), which depicts an Australian soldier killing an Afghan child.^[1]^[2]^[3]

Biography[edit]

Since his grandparents were soldiers in the Korean War, Wuheqilin became a party loyalist when he was young. After graduating from a university in Changchun with a degree in art and design, Wuheqilin served as an intern in an animation and film production company in Beijing in 2009. Later, a director left the company and created his own studio, with whom Wuheqilin worked in Zhongguancun. At the end of 2013, he was invited to Shanghai Film Art Academy (zh:上海电影艺术学院) to give a lecture on computer graphics, and started a painting training institute called "Wuhe" in early 2014.^[4]

After Chinese consumers started threatening to boycott H&M, Nike and other brands that have joined a call to avoid using cotton produced in Xinjiang,^[5] Wuheqilin published his new artwork Blood Cotton Initiative to criticize the Better Cotton Initiative.^[6]

Significant works[edit]

A dispute between China and Australia arose in 2020 when a member of China's foreign ministry posted online a picture of Wuheqilin's image Peace Force, which depicts an Australian soldier preparing to slit an Afghan child's throat.^[7] The image is a reference to the Brereton Report, which found that Australian troops had illegally killed more than three dozen Afghan civilians.^[7] Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison demanded an apology, which China declined to give.^[7] Wuheqilin then created another image mocking Morrison.^[7]

After the May 2021 Group of Seven (G7) Foreign Ministers meeting, Wuheqilin created an image satirizing a photograph of G7 officials by portraying them in old-style military uniforms.^[7] Wuheqilin wrote, "The last time when these guys colluded to [suppress] China was in 1900; 120 years have passed, they are still dreaming."^[7] The image went viral on social media.^[7]

Reception[edit]

Academic Suisheng Zhao describes Wuheqilin as having made his reputation "with his scathing images of the United States as a blood-soaked, irrational, medieval realm[.]"^[7]

Following Wuheqilin's image satirizing the G7 Foreign Ministers, Chinese Communist Party-owned tabloid Global Times praised Wuheqilin as a Chinese patriot.^[7]