Hong Kong is one of the world’s most modern cities, a place of great technological advancement, financial importance, and artistic development. As an independent city-state, it has made a name for itself on the world stage in many different areas, including the arts. For muralists and street artists, Hong Kong represents an exciting place to see amazing work, and there’s no better time to check out Hong Kong’s art scene than during HKwalls.
HKwalls is an annual street art festival, held in the springtime, that attracts thousands of art enthusiasts to Hong Kong. This year, the festival moved to the Sham Shui Po district in Hong Kong. Sham Shui Po is the city’s poorest district, yet it’s also one of the oldest settled places in the area. Scientists have found evidence that people have lived in the area for at least two thousand years. Today, the district is very much part of a new world. It’s famous for its electronics street markets and, thanks to HKwalls, its beautiful public art.
At the latest HKwalls festival, artists and people came to Sham Shui Po from around the world, taking in the sights and creating beautiful, intricate, and fascinating murals, films, and other forms of street art. Plenty of famous artists appeared at the festival, including Parent’s Parents, Faust, Alana Tsui, Ryck, and Okuda. With so many talented people creating public art, it was hard to take it all in, much less decide on a favourite, but one piece has stood out above many others: a piece by Venice-based artist Peeta that tricks the eye into thinking his graffiti is popping off the wall.
The piece covers a large facade of an arcade called Golden Computer Arcade and blends Peeta’s knowledge of sculpture, graffiti writing, and design into one large-scale and beautiful piece. Peeta created the mural with a colour scheme that matches the surrounding district, emphasizing its place in the neighbourhood rather than attempting to stand out with loud colours.
The piece uses Peeta’s now signature writing style, which doesn’t actually emphasize clarity or communication, but style over substance, as it were. Rarely are Peeta’s writings actually legible, but that doesn’t matter, the pieces speak for themselves without the need for distinctive letters. As Peeta says about his own work: “In my own work, I endeavour to realise the sculptural quality of individual letters… I break them from their generic typographical form, stylizing them with shape and volume beyond mere semantic function.”
HKwalls is an important festival that not only helps create beautiful murals in some of Hong Kong’s poorer districts, but gives artists the space to make beautiful, lasting impacts on the community. Armed with little more than their paintbrushes and a designated canvas, many artists at HKwalls have made some of their largest and most impressive works, pieces that have lasted for years after.
