ZEN FOTO GALLERY

Presented in the form of a traditional picture scroll, Mark Pearson’s "Hong Kong Contemporary Ink Wash Painting" reflects on the final months of 2019, when Hong Kong saw its largest pro-democracy protests. Pearson, a long-time resident of the city, photographed the aftermath of the government’s haphazard cover-ups of slogans and images painted on its walls by protesters. In the scroll, these erased voices of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement first appear as abstract forms, or statements in their own right, before gradually returning to their original contexts within the city’s urban landscape and daily life.

The periodical cicadas live for 13 or 17 years underground, then come above ground to live for a few weeks to mate and lay eggs, then die.
Hong Kong in late 2019 was a bewildering time. A remarkable city was passing through another of its growing pains.
2019 also brought the painful realisation that we have been complacent in our assumption that, on the whole, our governments act benevolently in the interests of their people, a realisation that was confirmed by the unprecedented restrictions imposed globally after 2020. Looking back on these times, it is clear that all of this was unnecessarily harsh.
Should we mourn the loss of our innocent naivete or embrace our more cynical understanding?
Prior to 2019, graffiti had been sporadic in Hong Kong. Suddenly in late 2019 graffiti covered all accessible visible surfaces. A city constructed of concrete buildings, flyovers and embankments presented a myriad of canvases.
It was decided that it was inappropriate for the graffiti to remain visible. Perhaps removing the graffiti would change the citizens’ minds. An army of workers diligently worked to remove the graffiti, first using solvents to dissolve the ink pigments. After a few days a new blank canvas of fresh paint was applied. The graffiti had been obliterated.
For a few days, shorter than the adult lifetime of the cicadas, in that period between the solvent wash and the application of the sullen void of fresh paint there was a time in which a magical artifice briefly lived, a true Hong Kong Contemporary Ink Wash Painting.

― Mark Pearson, October 2025