Protest art latest: Luke Ching goes underground on the MTR subway network in Hong Kong as a station cleaner to highlight low-paid work of a silent army
- Luke Ching has often put himself in the shoes of low-paid workers to fight for their rights, and working as a minimum-wage MTR cleaner has been an eye-opener
- He is used to the question, ‘But is this art?’ – Ching’s response is to reject the idea of art as a commodity and the artist’s role as a ‘producer’
Luke Ching Chin-wai doesn’t exactly blend in as an undercover station cleaner on Hong Kong’s MTR subway network.
Conveniently disguised behind a face mask he may be, but one of Hong Kong’s best-known artists is simply too visible. At 1.88 metres (6ft 2 inches) tall and of strong build, he dwarfs his only other co-worker, the stand-in foreman – a petite, older woman who is representative of the silent, invisible army that methodically wipes down surfaces and cleans toilets inside the city’s busiest public transport hubs.
That they remain overlooked even when their work has become more crucial and risky during a pandemic is the reason the 49-year-old artist, columnist and part-time lecturer is working an eight-hour shift along the Tuen Ma Line that connects the eastern and western New Territories with Kowloon.
On November 28, Ching signed up with Winson Cleaning Service, one of the contractors providing cleaning services for the railway company which is majority-owned by the Hong Kong government.
Ching has discovered there is nothing basic about a job that pays the statutory minimum wage of HK$37.50 (US$4.80) per hour. It is obnoxious – a colleague has warned him that when professionals are called in to unblock station toilets, he will have to clean up all the muck that covers the floor afterwards. And the work has become harder since the pandemic began.