Where can you find an urban oasis in Hong Kong? You might head to country parks, gardens or the beach. But for the latest winners of a student competition, art serves as the ultimate sanctuary.
This year, the Wharf Hong Kong Secondary School Art Competition, supported by the Hong Kong Museum of Art, awarded 31 student artists for their paintings and digital works.
Awardees used art to communicate their responses to the competition’s theme “Urban Oasis”, from dismantling social stigma to finding a haven away from the suffocating pressure of academics.
Academics and school life
In her piece The Flyer of Rumours, painting merit awardee Samantha Tsang frames an evocative self-portrait within jarring blocks of false information and negative labels.
The Po Leung Kuk Tang Yuk Tien College student aims to convey how gossip at school has affected her self-esteem and hopes the message will resonate with other young people suffering from classmates talking behind their backs.
Through printmaking, she put up more than a dozen copies of her art on a wall; when combined with the artwork’s typography, this layout mimicked that of posters plastered on the streets.
“I would like to show a feeling of being judged by the public,” the 18-year-old said.
While Samantha’s artwork emphasises the challenging social dynamics of school, Matthew Wong Chun-yin’s painting expresses how doodling serves as a refuge from academic pressures.
The Homantin Government Secondary School student portrays himself pencilling cartoons in the margins of his textbooks.
The watercolour and oil pastel piece, Textbook Doodling, received an “Urban Oasis” special award and earned Matthew the second runner-up position in the painting category.
“I hope when people look at my artwork, they do not just see a drawing,” the 13-year-old said. “I hope they see the voices of Hong Kong children. We love learning, but we also need time to dream, play and create.”
Matthew noted the importance of creativity during the stress of school life.
“To many students, they [doodles] are real feelings and secret comfort zones,” he said.
Communities and relationships
Digital graphics first runner-up Avia Chiu Yat-sum champions acceptance and diversity with her artwork titled Smiles of Down Syndrome. Her piece consists of 15 portraits of people with Down’s syndrome – a genetic condition in which a person is born with an extra chromosome.
The 14-year-old was inspired by a centre near her home where she encountered people with Down’s syndrome. She recalled first feeling cautious around the residents, but soon realised how kind they were.
“I hope to break the stereotypes and labels that society places on people with Down’s syndrome, allowing the audience to see who they truly and uniquely are,” she said.
The St Paul’s Secondary School pupil chose to use a monochromatic palette to accentuate the subjects’ beaming smiles.
“Without vibrant colours creating distinctions, it symbolises that no one is superior or inferior by nature,” she shared.
“Knowing that this artwork might encourage viewers to rethink their existing stereotypes makes me even more determined to use art as a voice.”
Holy Family Canossian School student Selina Pang earned the painting category’s first runner-up position for her artwork Encounter, exploring the relationship between mother and child. Her oil painting pieces together three moments in time: her mother as a child, herself as a child and the moment the two first met.
The 16-year-old explained why she created a triptych, combining three panels to represent the fate that brought her and her mother together.
“You can see two lines are formed: the lower one is the life of my mother, and the upper one is the timeline of my life,” she said.
The student added that the award allowed her to apply for the Wharf Art Scholarship Scheme, which encouraged her to consider pursuing art at university.
Kelly Mao Yansu – who plans to study fine arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong – earned a merit award for her painting titled All This Is for Your Own Good. She used the metaphor of a mother sculpting a human from a pig and a father reading a manual on how to train a child, to explore repressive parent-child dynamics.
“I want to convey the suffocating feeling that children experience of the moral pressure of [the phrase] ‘I am doing it for your own good’,” the 20-year-old explained.
The student questioned whether by carving out their children’s futures, parents were simultaneously whittling away individuality and agency.
Mao highlighted the irony created by the calligraphy in her artwork, which reads: “a harmonious family makes everything well”.
“It strikes a contrast between what’s in the painting [on the wall] and what the father and mother are doing,” she explained.
Mao said she hoped that young audiences would relate to the artwork and that it would prompt adults to reflect on their parenting approaches.
Disclaimer: The student writer of this story received an honourable mention from the competition for her painting.
These artworks and other winning entries will be exhibited in Harbour City, Plaza Hollywood and Times Square between October and December of this year.
