Hong Kong street art: how Wan Chai is being transformed as graffiti gains acceptance
The sixth street art festival, organised by HKwalls in collaboration with the Hong Kong Design Centre, has transformed the vibrant district into an outdoor gallery
Walls sprayed with slogans, stencils and scenes don’t just affect the aesthetic value of a city – they can also inspire cultural shifts.
Just as the original “Lennon Wall” sprang up in Prague in the 1980s, as citizens behind the iron curtain voiced their dissent through art, Hong Kong now has its own walls covered, in messages of support for the extradition bill protests. And similar to the Hong Kong streets and plazas taken over by neon Post-it notes, the Czech Lennon Wall is periodically destroyed and recreated, to symbolise uprisings – in both the creative and political spheres.
This year’s street art and mural festival organised by HKwalls did not delve into politics specifically, yet the works adorning walls in Wan Chai are redolent of a city that is becoming comfortable expressing its values through visual public media.
“[Street art] makes people more aware of the space they’re in. They stop and take notice,” says Jason Dembski, the American architect and designer who founded the non-profit HKwalls with Hongkongers Stan Wu and Maria Wong in 2014. “The Lennon Walls are about communicating thoughts and ideas and sharing them with the wider public, which is what a lot of street art is about.”
Take a stroll around Wan Chai and you’ll see an already colourful district bursting with murals ranging in size from a door to the entire side of a tower block. For the sixth year running, the area was taken over by the rattle and hiss of hundreds of spray cans, the sticky lick of rollers and the swoop and swish of brushes.