Adopted by Country: An Artist from China in Aboriginal Australia

Xueping Xiaoping’s journey toward Aboriginal collaboration reveals a nuanced, evolving relationship between respect, art, and cultural exchange.

Zhou Xiaoping, born and educated in China and classically trained in the Chinese artistic techniques of sketching and painting, arrived in Australia in 1988. Soon after, keen to explore what lay beyond major metropolitan centres, he travelled with sketchbook and camera to Central Australia where he first met with Aboriginal people. ‘Friends’, says X...