Urban Art Images and the Concerns of Mainlandization in Hong Kong

Abstract Shaped in the shadow of colonialism and post-colonialism, visual arts in Hong Kong have wrestled with issues of identity, locality, and international recognition. The lengthy process of the transfer of sovereignty, initiated in 1984 by the signing of the Joint Declaration, inspired contemporary artists in Hong Kong to assert their locality. In the 1990s in particular, since the trauma of the Tian’anmen Incident in 1989, ‘[a] psychic decolonization occurred which marked out a distance from both of these larger contexts [Western and Chinese art] without simply denying either’ (Clarke 2001: 8; also pp. 38‒69). The ideological struggles were visible in architecture and official public art too, which celebrated the reunion both during and after the Handover in 1997. It can also be argued that official public art in Hong Kong to a certain extent marks an ongoing cultural mainlandization of the urban space by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). But how do urban art images, such as street art and contemporary graffiti, survive the discourses of post-colonialism in its specific forms of de/recolonization and mainlandization, and debates of cultural heritage and indigenous identities? How do they engage with the complex situation? I seek to explore these questions by modifying Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) definition of space as a continuous process in which the physical, mental, and social aspects of the space are intertwined. In this process of creating the space of urban art images, we need to consider the agency of the creators of urban art images as constructors of the space and its norms, the nationality/ethnicity of the creators, as well as the contextualized formal analysis of the images and the site-responsiveness. Based on intensive periods of fieldwork research in Hong Kong since 2012, extensive photographic documentation, and frequent meetings and in-depth interviews with more than sixty local and non-local creators of urban art images, my aim is to provide a different perspective to the usage and understanding of urban public space at the grassroots level. As I have come to understand, while following the creators throughout the alleys, streets, canals, rooftops, and abandoned buildings, the urban public space appears very different in the eyes of the creators of urban art images. Keywords: urban art images, contemporary graffiti, street art, mainlandization, urban public space

2020

Since the preservation campaigns at Lee Tung Street, the Star Ferry Pier, and the Queen’s Pier that erupted in the early to mid-2000s, Hong Kong participatory art has undertaken an increasingly proactive role in local spatial movements, which marks the organizational and strategical evolvements of this artistic category that differentiate it from earlier public and community art. While research initiatives after 2010 have identified regional geospatial politics as one major concern for local participatory art today, existing studies tend to take a contextual approach with main emphases on why art becomes involved in urban spatial struggles while rarely proceeding to investigate what strategies or modes of spatial practices have emerged from relevant projects and what implications they have on the material-social spaces of the city. This hesitation to forward an interpretive evaluation of the focused phenomenon stems from the absence of epistemological concreteness in participatory art theories and criticisms, which necessitates the introduction of new analytical tools in research on the subject. To answer the pending questions, this research employs Henry Lefebvre’s theories of the social production of space to examine three representative projects selected from a preliminary survey of local participatory art programs/groups which involve spatial practices. In exploring the contents, strategies, and socio-spatial implications of these cases, it presents three models of spatially oriented participatory art. On this basis, a cross-case analysis is conducted to explore how participatory art in general offers counterforces against the neoliberalist social-material and aesthetic reprogramming of the city while laying the social foundation for the anticipated production of differential spaces. As more urban renewal and land resumption plans are anticipated to storm through the city in the coming decades, this research hopes to provide for practitioners, researchers, and local communities the discursive and conceptual tools to understand the role of art in preceding and future spatial contestations.

Introduction Hong Kong is transnational and transcultural by nature. The trends in visual and popular culture are constantly shaped by people and vogues flowing through the city. A key issue visible in all spheres of life is the balancing between two aims: How to be part of the international scene while also developing Hongkongnese self-identities (as citizens of Hong Kong) mirrored against the mainland Chinese as the “other.” Differentiation from mainland China co-exists with interdependence and co-operation in many fields of culture, too. While the impact of foreign trends and creators of urban art images has been significant in Hong Kong, one should not lose sight of original production, either. A case in point is the “King of Kowloon” (Tsang Tsouchoi, 1921–2007), a prolific writer of calligraphic texts on any surface in urban public space since the 1960s. As will be discussed, King and his oeuvre is an illuminating case of transforming perceptions and the inconvenience of Western definitions. He also illustrates how the development of urban art images differs from that in mainland China: His production spans decades of Hong Kong history, from British governance until 1997 to the city’s articular status as a Special Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China. The socio-political and cultural context of Hong Kong has clearly had an impact on the emergence and development of the urban art images, including the variety in content and format as well as the varying levels of transculturality, concepts, acceptance, and employment for different purposes by institutions, city authorities, and even the police. Nonetheless, the vicinity of mainland China, and of the city of Shenzhen as Hong Kong’s next-door neighbor, allows forms of collaboration with mainland Chinese creators in exhibitions and various events in particular, including the Meeting of Styles (MOS).

Hong Kong Studies, 2023

This article aims to mediate the fleeting notion of the border of Hong Kong through the lens of contemporary art and the participatory creativity during recent social movements. The subjectivity of Hong Kong and its people often underpins social movements in Hong Kong after 1997, and in the past two decades is negotiated in the forms of confrontation and contention on geopolitical, nationalistic, and ethnic borders between Hong Kong and the Mainland. The social unrests indicate that nationality and ethnicity may not be the prevailing attribution for devising one's attachment to a place. The notion of identity and its boundaries are complex orchestrations that involve confounding subjective and variable aspects of humanity, such as emotion and psychological attachment. In this sense, the notion of border is a transient one, whereby Hongkongness is constantly manifested. The works of three Hong Kong artists-Samson Young (b. 1979), Luke Ching (b. 1972), and Tang Kwok-hin (b. 1983)-illustrate and mediate both the fluidity of multiple assemblages on the boundaries of Hong Kong SAR and the trans-border correlations between Hong Kong and Taiwan. The participatory creativity, namely the Lennon Wall and diverse creativity once spread across the city during the 2014 and 2019 protests, also allegorize the diverse and mutated boundaries of individuals that comprise the subjectivity of

Contemporary and alternative art in Hong Kong has strong local roots and translocal connections, and while it reflects cultural politics in the city it lacks substantial international recognition. This interdisciplinary analysis focuses on the contexts of production of contemporary art by women in Hong Kong and their centrality in the city’s arts community. The narrative contrasts the presence of contemporary and alternative arts and its absence from art criticism discourses through the disjuncture between the geopolitics of contemporary Asian art and the making of Hong Kong into an unprecedented territorial formation. Reading local art through alternative space–time concepts and intersubjective arts practice is proposed through the exhibit-event, “If Hong Kong, A Woman/Traveller.”

Introduction Since the mid-1990s, intricate and ever-changing negotiation processes are shaping the spaces for urban art images in Mainland China. The scenes and their developments vary from one city to another because of the impact of individual local and foreign creators of urban art images, government officials, agents of contemporary art including, among others, gallery owners, art critics, art professors, and many other related features, such as local and international events. Rapid urban development has both created and destroyed sites for urban art images. Despite some accepted sites to paint, for many locals, creating any kind of urban art image is a shortterm pastime, usually a part of student life. Most of the early pioneers have become occupied with their daily jobs and time to continue engagement on the streets is very limited. Some creators, such as art students, may only take part once or twice in authorized events by officials promoting their own understanding of acceptable forms (see e.g. China.org.cn 2013). Regardless of the ephemerality of the images, sites, and creators, the aim of this chapter is to introduce the main characteristics of the phenomenon through case studies focusing on the scenes in Beijing and in Shanghai, and to suggest a framework beneficial for further research. When compared with the international trends that have impacted on the emergence and transformation of what is usually addressed as “graffiti” or “street art,” we are able to pinpoint significant differences in terms of intentions, perceptions, reception, employment, and the art market in both Beijing and Shanghai. The focus of this chapter lies in these two cities in which I have followed the developments since 2006 through fieldwork periods, news and social media, interviews, personal communication, and observations in situ.

The Emergence of a New Public Art in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong from 1990 to 2012, 2019

This thesis is concerned with how two main genres of public art: traditional and ‘new genre public art’ evolved in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong between 1990 and 2012 in response to political, economic, spatial, social and cultural changes. Since 1990, Chinese public art has focused on traditional forms of public art and the relationship of public art to architecture and urban planning. Unique forms of public art and architecture, I argue, have also been emerging amidst a dynamic of unprecedented rapid urbanisation and the country’s significant engagement with the global community. One example of this is the implementation of China’s urbanisation policies, which have transformed the spatial structures of Chinese cities and the role of public art in the new urban landscape. Drawing on critical perspectives from public art, contemporary Chinese art, architecture and urban theories, this thesis presents an in-depth study of Chinese public art, including the non-material production of art, which involves public engagement. The investigation of Chinese public art has resulted in an expansion of the definition of new genre public art in consideration of the peculiarities of the Chinese experience, including in politically autonomous Hong Kong. The key argument of this thesis is that the development of Chinese public art during the last two and a half decades has not been dominated by a particular narrative, ideology or mode of production but, instead, is a consequence of varying responses to government policies and the changing political, social, cultural and economic environments in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Art Journal, 2019

Interpretations of culture in Hong Kong have tended to portray the city in terms of the vanishing present, in some combination of the instant, fleeting and disappearing. This article redresses such language of lack to consider instead how the idea of precariousness in the realm of the cultural has been less a condition of cultural production than a cultural strategy. Street art, including alternative performance art and political graffiti, has made the city itself the site of roving cultural production: walls, street surfaces and passageways accommodate forms of expression that the city’s cultural institutions have only more recently and uneasily embraced. In these different modes of time-space, contemporary alternative art occupies transitory territory and locates its ‘precariousness’ in lack of definitive status and uncertain future – mimetic conditions of defining culture in Hong Kong society itself. Its measures, by contrast, emerge in Jacques Rancière’s distribution of the sensible: the ways in which they render what is visible, knowable and ultimately sayable. As objects generating negotiation, such contemporary cultural projects anticipate instabilities of the present, identify hegemonic political economic logics and seek modes of resistance. Within these perspectives, this discussion juxtaposes two simultaneous events: the exhibit ‘Memories of King Kowloon’ on the historic graffiti of Tsang Tsou-choi, and the stenciled graffiti of Ai Weiwei in public space during April and May 2011.