Street artist Prairie has one simple message for the people of Hong Kong: release. This tag can be found across town on walls, pillars, phone boxes and right under the nose of security cameras.
'When I first started writing, it was just to get my message out to young people who would notice the little words that are written on the streets and would spend some time to read it and understand it, instead of just thinking it was some random thing on a wall,' says the 20-year-old who does mostly wheat-pasted posters, stickers and tagging in buzzing districts such as Central, Causeway Bay, Wan Chai and Sha Tin.
What he does is still illegal in this city and that's why when he is out spreading - and spraying - his messages, he carries changes of clothing to throw any law enforcers off the scent. He believes it's worth the risk.
'At first I thought it wasn't working, until one day a friend of a friend came up to me and said she saw the word on a very stressed-out day and said she actually felt the message.
'The main reason why I [tag] is because people in Hong Kong are too uptight and never do what they like because of money and jobs and school. People put too much pressure on themselves.'
That may also explain why urban art - be it a simple tagging of an artist's name or larger graffiti pieces - never quite caught on here the same way it did in cities such as New York and London, even though this town has no shortage of talent. You can, for instance, see some edgy and fun works around Pottinger Street in Central, the alley that leads from Russell Street to Tang Lung Street in Causeway Bay, and the narrow passageway that runs from Pitt Street to Dundas Street in Mong Kok.
Start From Zero, a duo who have been blazing the urban art trail in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Taipei, say the number of street artists has dwindled in recent years because they either joined the rat race or got fed up with a lack of reaction to their work.
