A district councilor and artist hopes to launch community-based art therapy to heal and empower Hong Kong people in the face of the authorities’ relentless suppression of the pro-democracy movement.

Kisslan Chan, who represents residents of Yuen Long in the New Territories, has made a first attempt. Last month, he displayed the creation “Fallen Freedom” on a street railing in place of the typical political banners strung along the roads by district and legislative councilors.

Instead of the promotional banners that are a dime a dozen, Chan used the railing space allocated to him to install an artwork that consisted mainly of five long strips of black paper. If viewed at the right angle, it blended in with the rails to show the Chinese characters for “freedom.”

“The main reason for the street installation was because banners placed on the street kept getting slashed” by vandals, Chan told Apple Daily, but added that he was surprised to see a big reaction from the public. “Fallen Freedom” went viral on social media, then disappeared after a few days.

Undaunted, Chan next created five large pieces of the letter “T” to represent “Till They Tell The Truth” and hung them at the same location. His message: to say that Hong Kong people will wait for the moment when the truth will out.

Chan studied art in America for 10 years and used to be a visual art instructor. In terms of political participation, he was a member on the team of former legislative councilor Eddie Chu and won a seat himself on one of Hong Kong’s 18 district councils in November 2019. That was the time when pro-democracy candidates swept the district council election amid widespread protests against the government and its extradition legislative bill.

Creating art was tiring and time consuming; however, Chan said that he wanted to make good use of his creativity to transform voices from the community into symbols and graphics which could express the feelings of the common people.

The artist said that he currently had over 100 ideas in his head and was seeking more channels to display his works, including by turning his office into a gallery or cooperating with other district councilors.

Chan was also fond of cultural conservation and environmental protection. He planned to design an itinerary that would cover 10 heritage conservation sites, so as to promote environmental protection and nurture Hongkongers to care for their community.

He did not spend much time worrying about the threat of being disqualified by the authorities, a problem that had happened to other pro-democracy councilors. The focus was on work for the Yuen Long community, he said, hoping that everyone would become a community artist integrating politics, art and people.

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