A New Book Reveals What’s Special About Hong Kong Street Art

Time was, if you wanted to see street art in Hong Kong, you really had to hunt for it. If you went to the right alley in Causeway Bay, you might catch a glimpse of the rotund characters drawn by Graphic Airlines; turn a corner in Kwun Tong and there may have been a paste-up by Start From Zero. 

“It was so hard to find something,” says tour guide and street art enthusiast Alex Unrein. “I used to work as a flight attendant so I saw a lot around the globe. When I came to Hong Kong in 2009, there was hardly anything. And I was so happy about anything I could find, I just started photographing whatever I saw.”

Flash forward to 2025 and a lot has changed, at least in a few key neighbourhoods. Thanks in large part to the annual HKwalls festival launched in 2014, local artists that once worked in the shadows have created a whole universe of eye-catching murals on shop shutters and blank walls. The city has caught the attention of international street artists too. French artist Space Invader has come here several times, installing hundreds of mosaic tile artworks around the city. There are several works around the city by Portuguese artist Vhils, who etches portraits into walls using hammers and chisels. UK-based artist Aspire recently worked on a series of bird-themed murals around Lantau.

Unrein has been around to witness it all. She has been in and out of Hong Kong regularly since her first visit, moving here full time in 2017, after which she launched her tour company Wanderlust Walks. “Street art has become a force in the city. It’s part of the urban fabric,” she says. 

That’s what motivated her to self publish her new book, Colourful Hong Kong – Street Art Stories, a 308-page collection of photos, profiles and essays that document the evolution of the city’s street art and the people who make it. That includes two sections on the works of Hong Kong’s most celebrated proto-street artists, the King of Kowloon — known for his uniquely dense calligraphy — and the Plumber King. But the main focus is on the generation of artists who have translated the global street art movement into something that truly reflects Hong Kong. 

The city as canvas

Street art has existed for as long as there have been streets — or even longer, if you consider that one of the first things people did when they moved into caves was to draw on the walls. But contemporary street art is an outgrowth of the graffiti culture that emerged amidst the economic and social upheaval of 1970s New York. The same communities that gave birth to hip hop sent a generation of kids into the streets and on subways, armed with spray paint and markers they used to create increasingly intricate tags and throw ups. 

Among them was someone who is now one of Hong Kong’s most respected street artists: Stern Rockwell, who was born in Brooklyn in 1968. As a kid, he remembers being fascinated by the graffiti he saw in the New York subway. “I asked my mom, ‘How did they do that?’” he recalled in an interview with the now-defunct magazine The Peak. By the time he reached high school, he was joining other graffiti writers on Brooklyn’s subway siding tracks. “Some nights you could catch 100 cars parked on the tracks,” he said.

Writing graffiti led Rockwell into a career in art and design, which he credits with saving him from the drug-fueled violence that gripped New York in the 1980s. “People were dying, people were getting locked up,” he said. “I was poor but I was able to make a living doing graffiti. It saved my life.” 

At the time, Hong Kong rappers like MC Yan were bringing New York graffiti culture to Hong Kong, but with limited influence. It wasn’t until the 2000s that the seeds of street art began to take root. As early as the 1970s, contemporary artists like Basquiat had begun taking cues from graffiti writers, using the city’s walls as their canvas. But it was the rise of the internet and the global attention earned by artists like Banksy that inspired a handful of Hong Kong artists to do the same. Local crews like Start from Zero and Graphic Airlines took a more contemporary, illustration-influenced approach with a toolkit that included spray paint, stencils and wheatpasted posters.

A growing number of artists soon followed in their footsteps — including Rockwell, who moved to Hong Kong in 2010 and began infusing the city with the distinct style he has developed over the past four decades. In her book, Unrein profiles him and many of the other artists who have shaped Hong Kong’s street art scene, including Bao Ho, Kristopher Ho, Zoie Lam, AAFK and Cath Love. “This city has produced a great number of artists who are all unique in their own ways,” she says. 

Hong Kong hustle

Unrein’s passion for street art runs back to her childhood. “I grew up in Berlin, when the wall was still around,” she says. “There was a lot of graffiti. It was everywhere — you couldn’t escape it. And when I realised that some of it was artsy, that’s the moment I decided, oh, this is actually interesting.” 

In Hong Kong, Unrein was intrigued to see the influence of Japanese manga on artists like Bao Ho. “Bao started by painting Sailor Moon,” she says. “A lot of artists here came from that background and you can see and feel it in their art — the way they paint, the creatures they put in there.” 

But there’s a limit to the generalisations you can make about Hong Kong street art. Each practitioner has their own distinct style, including the many expat artists living here. “Western artists come from completely different backgrounds and influences,” says Unrein. “I know it’s such a cliché, East meets West, but you have that coming together here, people mixing.”

If there’s a thread that unites them, it’s a certain pragmatic commercial orientation. “Most of the artists here are coming from illustration or graphic design,” says Unrein. “They’re looking at it in the sense of how to make a living from it. European artists just go with what they want to do. Hong Kong artists have to be more pragmatic about it. You can see that in their art.” 

Police and property owners in Hong Kong are not as tolerant of street art as in other global cities. Aside from a handful of discreet corners where illicit street art thrives, much of the work you see on the streets was facilitated either by HKwalls — which is run as a non-profit organisation — or commissioned by a commercial client. “You see a new mural and you’re like, ‘Great!’ And then you look closer and it’s an advertisement,” says Unrein. “For some artists, that might seem like a sell out, but in Hong Kong it’s what you have to do if you want to be able to do it.” 

That blend of art and commerce has raised concerns in cities around the world. Many scholars have noted that street art can be instrumentalised to make a place more marketable for development. “Compromising your art to make money is the definition of selling out,” proclaims art critic Hrag Vartanian. When HKwalls mounted the third edition of its festival in Sham Shui Po, in 2016, some local artists and activists accused it of facilitating the gentrification of a working class enclave. 

But Unrein thinks such criticism of street art misses the mark. “Gentrification is a bigger issue [than] just street art,” she says. “Street art is often the first step into it because it’s usually in those districts that are under the radar. But that’s just what happens in cities. Developers are looking for the new hip spot and street art is the first step. It’s kind of annoying. But it’s not necessarily fair to the artists. They’re just trying to find spots to work.”

A love letter to street art

In any case, that’s not the kind of critical analysis that you can expect in Colourful Hong Kong: Unrein’s book is an unabashed celebration of street art and the people who make it. And she feels this is exactly what is needed in a city where street art has become commonplace while remaining paradoxically overlooked. “People have gotten used to it, but they still don’t really consider it,” she says. There’s a story behind each mural and she wants to tell it.

Unrein also hopes her book helps Hongkongers get to know the people behind the art. And she wants it to convey the pleasure she feels when she encounters new pieces of street art. “I like to walk and observe what’s around me and if there’s something that wasn’t there yesterday, it’s that moment of surprise that puts a smile on my face,” she says. “It makes the city even more of a place of discovery.” 

 Colourful Hong Kong – Street Art Stories is available for purchase online. Click here for more information.