Fears for Hong Kong protest artwork

Fears for Hong Kong protest artwork
By Euronews
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Pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong are taking action again, this time to preserve their artwork, which authorities plan to remove.

Banners, paintings and various objects have grown up around the protest areas. Now around 200 volunteers go around the sites next to the central business district to collect information and snap photos of the various pieces of artwork.

“When we look at the artworks and objects day and night they boost our morale, they gently express our demands. We want to preserve these things because of our emotional needs,” explained Clarisse Yeung

The group has already found space in a warehouse to store the artwork. Some iconic visuals like a stairway flooded with messages of support dubbed the “Lennon Wall” are almost impossible to preserve so it and others will be preserved with digital photos.

But what will the authorities reaction be to the artwork and how will they remove the many objects?

“I really want to see how Hong Kong police or bailiffs face the art of the people of this island. Even if they immediately, cold-bloodedly clear the site with machines I want to see it and see if they will be touched even in the slightest bit when they view our artwork,” said Kain Cheung.

At one end of the Admiralty protest site, travelling artist Miso Zhou who is from mainland China was painting the scenes around him.

He would like to take them back to mainland China for people there to see and hoped he would have time to take some work away with him; but at the same time had no objections if authorities did destroy them.

“The art works are part of society. If they get destroyed they become more beautiful. They will have more stories and embrace more layers of meaning. This is the point of it all. I think contemporary art should interact with society and reality. It has more meaning that way,” explained the artist.

Christmas is in the air bringing its own decorations around Hong Kong and to its skyscrapers. Can the protest site and its artwork survive to welcome in Christmas Day?

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