Rescuing Protest Artwork From Hong Kong’s Streets
By JOYCE LAUNOV. 14, 2014
Nicolas Asfouri/Getty Images — Agence France-Presse
HONG KONG — Thousands of pastel Post-It notes, marked with messages of support for pro-democracy demonstrators, form a fluttering collage that snakes around the wall of a staircase outside Hong Kong government headquarters. Nearby stands “Umbrella Man,” a 12-foot-tall wood sculpture of a figure holding a bright yellow umbrella. Above one of the city’s thoroughfares, where demonstrators have been camped out since late September, students have sewn together hundreds of broken umbrellas to form a giant canopy.
The pro-democracy demonstrations that have occupied sections of Hong Kong since September have created more than political statements and traffic jams. The so-called Umbrella Movement has also produced an explosion of public art that has turned the protest sites into enormous outdoor art exhibitions. The art, pointedly political and often witty, has become as much an expression of the protest as the megaphone speeches and the metal street barricades.
But reports that the city may soon clear the protest sites have set preservationists, historians and art lovers scrambling to figure out how to record and preserve the art for posterity.
Because most of the art is still on the streets, the archiving is largely digital. Some digital renditions and objects already are running alongside the “Disobedient Objects” exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The Umbrella Movement Visual Archives and Research Collective, led partly by academics, is creating open-data platforms and Google maps to mark the location of art pieces.
A new group — Umbrella Movement Art Preservation, or UMAP — has “rescue team members” on the ground, armed with cellphones and ready to mobilize volunteers to evacuate art on short notice. They have received offers of help from sympathetic truck drivers and about a dozen private galleries.
“Our work is important because these artifacts and images document the spirit of the time, of the year 2014, and our calls for political reform, democracy and justice,” said Kacey Wong, an artist, educator and participant in UMAP. “It is a reflection of our civilization. It’s how we will be remembered 25 years from now.”
Just as the protests have upended the notion that Hong Kong people don’t care about politics, the blast of public art is changing the image of a city better known for making money than for art and culture. Still best known as an international financial center, and lacking a world-class art museum, Hong Kong has become the world’s third-largest art market behind New York and London, thanks to high-priced auctions and an array of art galleries that have opened here in the past few years.
Public art is another matter, however. In a city that prizes order, graffiti and other street art have been tightly restricted. The protest sites, occupied zones run by the protesters that exist outside the law, created a free space that artists have taken advantage of.
“This event, and the passion behind it, has brought about this outburst of creativity and expression,” said Katie de Tilly, a gallery owner who is helping with the preservation. “It’s a new thing and should be celebrated.”
Uncertainty over exactly when the preservationists may have to spring into action is complicating the task. A big question is how to house the physical works, which are mostly transitory and some of which are huge.
In mid-October, when the police dismantled parts of the two protest zones in the busy commercial areas of Mong Kok and Causeway Bay, some artwork was destroyed, including an oversize spray can made of cardboard pointed at a clutch of umbrellas that blocked the Causeway Bay tram line.
Many of the artworks are large, crowd-sourced installations. A life-size cutout of President Xi Jinping of China holding a yellow umbrella has inspired satirical works, as well as many selfies. Cartoonists have portrayed Hong Kong’s leader, Leung Chun-ying, as everything from a fang-baring wolf to a Cultural Revolution hero.
Umbrellas became the prominent protest symbol after demonstrators used them to protect themselves from pepper spray and tear gas. Bright yellow ones have since been reinterpreted endless times in the banners, paintings, cartoons and photography that have turned the protests into an enormous exhibition. Tiny origami umbrellas, folded by office workers on their lunch breaks, dot the main protest site in the city’s Admiralty district.
The collage of Post-It notes has been dubbed the Lennon Wall after the memorial in Prague to the murdered singer John Lennon. Meaghan McGurgan, a 30-year-old theater critic who is working with UMAP, said she “saw a sign saying the Lennon Wall might be going into the trash, so I put up a few blog posts and a couple of tweets asking ‘Hey! Can anyone help?’
” Netizens responded by flooding her inbox with snapshots of protest art. “In less than a week, we compiled 3,000 photos in our archive,” she said. “People are emailing us hundreds of photos a day.”
In Mong Kok — a rough-and-tumble area across the harbor from Hong Kong Island — there was particular consternation over the destruction of makeshift religious altars, in a city where many homes and businesses have tributes to Christian, Taoist, Buddhist and folk deities. Demonstrators had also used funeral objects like “ghost money,” which is traditionally burned as an offering to the dead. These symbols of mourning are also used in the city’s annual vigil commemorating the June 4, 1989, bloody crackdown in Beijing on a student-led pro-democracy movement.
Even as fear grows that the exhibition may soon end, artists are continuing to create and explore. One recent day, Lawrence Wong, a Hong Kong native who has worked in the film industry, was using flexible pipes and yellow canvas to construct a 16-foot umbrella.
“The idea is to make 10 of these, one on each lamppost, lining the street all the way past the P.L.A. building to Central,” he said, referring to the People’s Liberation Army headquarters and Hong Kong’s business district. Mr. Wong, who flew back from Europe when he heard the protests were starting, was getting a helping hand with his installation from a group of working-class men.
“I come almost every day to see the artwork,” said Audrey Eu, a former lawmaker and one of the founders of the pro-democratic Civic Party. “It says a lot about Hong Kong’s identity. We have our own culture, our own rule of law, our own way of writing in traditional Chinese characters and our own way of speaking in Cantonese.”
Emily Tang, a 21-year-old social work student, and her friends have been creating one new artwork for each day of the demonstrations, incorporating traditional Chinese characters and illustrations of the city.
“Hong Kongers’ sense of identity has become stronger because of this exercise,” she said. “It’s an effort we’re taking together.”
Some critics have seen the structures built by Hong Kong protesters, from elaborate bed spaces to sprawling study areas and gardens, as creative works themselves.
“It is all installation art,” said Mr. Wong of UMAP, who has curated politically themed art shows in the past. “These works are full of humor, wit and intelligence.”
“One of the barricades was amazing,” he added. “It was built by traditional bamboo masters who helped the students. They were so thoughtful — they didn’t want the bamboo to stab anyone, so they put gloves on the pointy ends. Only they folded back all the fingers but the middle finger, which was left to point to the police station.”
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