Hong Kong's unique art hero passes away
Published on: 06-Aug-2007
A destitute Hong Kong man who became a unique art star for local people has passed away, leading to calls that his fading pieces of graffiti be preserved.Tsang Tsou-choi passed away last week aged 86, having carved a 50-year reputation through both an offbeat personal style and his unique art, which often focused on polemical discourse against Queen Elizabeth II and Hong Kong's colonial rulership.
Perhaps most uniquely of all, Tsang was often spotted spraying his graffiti art on lamp-posts, walls, phone boxes, pedestrian underpasses across the city, often shirtless and on crutches.
While many critics dismiss Tsang as a madman, his unique art works have increasingly come to be seen to hold deeper meanings in recent years, with his works showing at the hugely prestigious Venice Biennale in 2003 and then go under the hammer at a Sotheby's sale the following year.
Many of Tsang's work are now being lost in the vast cityscape, and his death has led to a flood of calls that the work of one the world's most unique artists of recent years be preserved.
"He has already become a cultural icon and part of the collective memory of Hong Kong," Lau Kin-wai, an art critic and friend of Tsang's, told Reuters. "[His work] is important for our future and past," Lau said.
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