Hong Kong’s in SHOCK
Hong Kong is obsessed with looking good. The city has perfected the art of surfaces, from skyscrapers that tower over its 7.5 million inhabitants to murals that make bar lines on Peele Street longer. But, in between the cracks of this polished exterior lives a subculture of artists and rebels that refuse to play along. They are a part of Hong Kong’s rising graffiti scene. Community members trade Art Basel tickets and shared studio spaces for stolen spray cans, late-night scrawls, and bubble-letter tags slapped across metal shutters.
Hong Kong's culture of graffiti artists and writers aren’t asking for applause or permission. As the city’s mural industry explodes, filling popular streets with glossy, commissioned walls (mainly from international artists), the local street artists and graffiti writers have drawn a hard line between what is real and what is just decoration. At the center of this is SHOCK, a Hong Kong native whose tag can be seen down virtually any alleyway, across every bridge overpass, and slapped onto the sides of trucks barreling through Mong Kok. SHOCK’s red and white throw-ups (a.k.a. throwies) are raw and impulsive, acting as a reminder that while Hong Kong keeps trying to reinvent itself as a prestige global art destination, there are still people here who would rather burn that whole narrative down than let it flatten who they are.
A core difference between graffiti writers and street artists is that graffiti writers don’t consider themselves artists. Graffiti is a letter-based form of expression, and participants hate being confused with muralists and street painters. “I was never good at drawing. I hate drawing, but in school, I liked scribbling in class and started writing SHOCK on my desk, and it felt good.” SHOCK shared in an interview about how they started their journey into graffiti.
International graf writers and muralists often learn SHOCK’s name the hard way—by accidentally painting over their work. In graffiti, rule number one is don’t cover someone’s piece unless you’re asking for a response. If someone breaks this rule, their piece is covered in revenge tags, a response made half out of spite and half out of principle. Revenge tags are unfastidious but deliberate throwies that SHOCK takes very personally: “I will cover up people's work until they quit painting. That’s also why I have a lot of street credit.” One muralist who covered SHOCK’s tag earlier this year now pays the notorious writer in spray paint before the muralist puts a new piece up. It’s a kind of street-level restitution, an offering. A recognition that in Hong Kong, graffiti writers like SHOCK aren’t just some punky background noise. You respect the lineage, or you answer to it.
The irony is that most muralists, especially the local ones, get it. The “beef” between muralists and graffiti writers isn’t really about turf but more about respect. According to Hong Kong muralist Kris Ho, “respect in street art comes from being so good no one dares touch your work.” Being ‘so good’ in graffiti subculture is not defined by technique or artistic talent. In graffiti, it is quantity over quality. The goal is to have your tag up on as many places as possible; the more inconvenient for the police to take down, the better.
SHOCK carves out their own world in a city that is trying to create a more cohesive and internationally palatable art market. Their tags create a new value on surfaces that traditionally have none. Unlike traditional artists seeking validation from gallerists or paid gigs, SHOCK collects feelings and fragments of themselves and leaves them for the city to deal with. “However the fuck we are feeling, we let people know,” they tell me.
Graffiti’s accessibility stands in stark contrast to Hong Kong’s exclusive art scene. Once a single drop of paint touches a wall (whether it be by a spray can, bucket of paint, or a cheap marker) you become a layer in the city’s visual archive. Anyone can participate. Anyone can speak. And that terrifies the structures that rely on gatekeeping to define what counts as art. Ho explained that in Hong Kong, “people can’t relate art to a profession. There is a traditional mindset that is pushing people traditional mind set that is stopping people to get into the industry or learn art.”
Graf writers like SHOCK are the ones refusing to let commercialization swallow culture whole. Graffiti tags are emotional disclosures in a city that discourages them, symbolizing something all Hongkongers understand but rarely say out loud: the grief of watching a place become unrecognizable and the urge to be seen before you disappear. Relentless tagging forces a kind of coexistence: every mural that is hit changes meaning, shifting from paid decor to contested territory. Every throw-up demands that we stop curating our lives long enough to actually feel something.
