Rhoda Kwan on the longing and guilt felt by many Hongkongers living the life of an exile in Taiwan
In April 2022, Hong Kong photographer Ko Chung Ming exhibited his latest work in Dadaocheng, on one of Taipei’s oldest streets. Hanging from the ceiling of a small converted art space were 14 enlarged portraits of Hongkongers who had, out of fear of arrest or unwillingness to live in a diminished version of their city, fled to Taiwan, to start over.
Ko’s previous exhibition captured the wounds protesters had suffered at the hands of police in 2019. Skin split open and fused back together on jagged red lines; black crevasses burnt into flesh by teargas canisters. This new collection shows what happened after the teargas subsided, when authorities turned from the blunt force of police batons to a tyrant’s law. All 14 images were overexposed, erasing the subjects’ faces. The accompanying blurbs identified some of them only by descriptions of their former lives in Hong Kong, and their hopes for new ones in Taiwan.
