Abstract

Shaped in the shadow of colonialism and post-colonialism, visual arts in Hong Kong have wrestled with issues of identity, locality, and international recognition. The lengthy process of the transfer of sovereignty, initiated in 1984 by the signing of the Joint Declaration, inspired contemporary artists in Hong Kong to assert their locality. In the 1990s in particular, since the trauma of the Tian’anmen Incident in 1989, ‘[a] psychic decolonization occurred which marked out a distance from both of these larger contexts [Western and Chinese art] without simply denying either’ (Clarke 2001: 8; also pp. 38-69). The ideological struggles were visible in architecture and official public art too, which celebrated the reunion both during and after the Handover in 1997. It can also be argued that official public art in Hong Kong to a certain extent marks an ongoing cultural mainlandization of the urban space by the People's Republic of China (PRC). But how do urban art images, such as street art and contemporary graffiti, survive the discourses of post-colonialism in its specific forms of de/recolonization and mainlandization, and debates of cultural heritage and indigenous identities? How do they engage with the complex situation?