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Affordable Art Fair Hong Kong 2022 focuses on young artists from the city and local art galleries, many of them recently opened

Sophia Hotung’s The Hong Konger Wall, its profiles of Hong Kong people a celebration of ethnic diversity, is one of the highlights of the Affordable Art Fair

The 2022 fair is a mostly Hong Kong affair, with more than 50 of the 65 exhibitors from the city because of quarantine rules that limit overseas arrivals

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“Key Maker” by Jonathan Jay Lee, from his series of “love letters to Hong Kong”, is featured at the Affordable Art Fair Hong Kong 2022, opening on August 4. Photo: Jonathan Jay Lee

Published: 5:15pm, 1 Aug 2022

A six-metre-wide (20 foot) mural is one of the highlights of this year’s Affordable Art Fair Hong Kong.

The mural is artist Sophia Hotung’s The Hong Konger Wall, a colourful mosaic of 216 side profiles that celebrates the ethnic diversity of the people who call the city home.

These are real individuals who answered Hotung’s open call for volunteers, and the wall conveys a message of being united but different. Each portrait is animated by the subject’s lively expression, even though they are all posing the same way – with their right hand up at eye level and making a “finger heart” gesture, a sign of love and peace popularised by K-pop stars.

The pose is a riff on The New Yorker magazine’s famous mascot, Eustace Tilley – a man in a top hat inspecting a butterfly through his monocle – who is a symbol of pride in the US city’s identity.

One of the 216 side profiles by Sophia Hotung that make up “The Hong Konger Wall”. Photo: Sophia Hotung

Hotung and her mock magazine cover made for Hong Kong. Photo: Sophia Hotung

Given how difficult it is to get into Hong Kong right now, this edition of the fair is a mostly local affair, with more than 50 of the 65 exhibitors coming from the city.