If walls could talk
Street art is one of the many ways in which the diversity of cultural life in a metropolis finds expression. The concentration of graffiti could change a perfectly regular neighborhood into a place full of color and character that create its unique look. So New York has its Bronx, London its Shoreditch, Melbourne its Centre Place and Seoul its Hongdae — neighborhoods whose names trigger instant recall of the images on the walls.
Graffiti and street art are relatively new in Hong Kong, although their popularity seems to be on the rise. From Wong Chuk Hang to Mong Kok, via Hollywood Road, more and more Hong Kong walls are serving as an open-air canvas for public art projects. Several artists’ collectives from within and outside Hong Kong seem determined to give Hong Kong’s sometimes rather dreary-looking old building facades a makeover. For example, the old building walls and steps in Ki Ling Lane and Chung Ching Street in Sai Ying Pun are now covered with lively paintings done in riotous colors and are barely recognizable.
Although breathing new life into old walls by filling them up with pictures and writing seems like a recent trend, the practice of painting the city’s building walls in vivid shades of unconventional colors is more entrenched. Here buildings painted in unorthodox shades of canary yellow, tangerine orange or a bright shade of candy apple are not all that hard to come by. The best-known among Hong Kong’s buildings to acquire an idiosyncratically bright coat of paint — probably also the oldest of its kind — is the Blue House in Stone Nullah Lane, Wan Chai. The tenement building was erected in the 1870s but got its charmingly uneven coat of indigo paint only in 1997. The building, along with some of the neighboring houses, had become government property in 1978. It was painted blue with a view to utilizing leftover paint from the Water Supplies Department. When the coat acquired by default proved to be rather attractive — although that wasn’t the original intention why it was used — the buildings around the blue house were painted in disarmingly cute, warm and vibrant shades of orange, green and lemon yellow, turning the neighborhood into a tourist spot.
Some of Hong Kong’s oldest public housing estates, such as Choi Hung Estate in Ngau Chi Wan and Chun Seen Mei Chuen in Ma Tau Wai, have similarly proved to be unintentional Instagram favorites because of their photogenic features.
It’s a trend that is likely to continue. So watch out for a new color revolution — Hong Kong’s walls they are a-changin’.