The artwork of Hong Kong’s Occupy Central Movement

Abstract

This chapter moves beyond discussions of Occupy Central's legality to explore the cultural significance of some of the images that this momentous event generated. It focuses on the movement's aesthetic dimension. It argues that its street art provides a point of entry into questions of identity in Hong Kong. The first thing to note about Occupy Central is that it was an intensely visual event. The artwork suggests that the movement hovered between different registers and that participants simultaneously saw it as a peaceful protest, an act of anarchism, a revolution, a form of vigilante justice and a striving for utopia. Another set of images, however, suggests that Occupy Central regarded itself as an explicit act of anarchism. The street art also suggests that the protestors conceived of Occupy Central as a distinctively Chinese resistance movement. The images suggest that despite the assertions it made about the need for universal suffrage and democratic elections, Occupy Central was also about identity.