NG Sze Tung
Chiu Lut Sau Memorial Secondary School

I decided to choose ‘City’ by Louise Ho as the theme to focus on for my drawing at first sight. I was touched by this poem, which describes the long-standing problem of street sleepers in Hong Kong.

Nowadays, many people in Hong Kong live in subdivided flats. Some even settle near public lavatories. On the contrary, the demand for luxury stores such as jewellery stores has been on the rise. In the painting, the man who is looking at his phone on the stairs represents an urban dweller who seeks materialistic happiness. He just sees the bustling side of the city, but overlooks the pain of the street sleeper living beneath the stairs. While the man is wearing a down jacket to keep himself warm in the cold, the street sleeper just has a short-sleeved shirt. There is a sharp contrast between the lives of the street sleeper and that of the urban dweller.

To express the idea that the street sleeper leads a simple life, I drew the picture with just a mechanical pencil and chose black and white as the theme colour. Though neon signs almost fill up half of the artwork, they do not light up the world of the street sleeper. Despite all the harsh conditions, I made him less miserable than he should be because I want to express the idea of hope and my belief that people in this prosperous city will show him love and care one day. I think he should stay positive and hopeful while seizing the day to change his life.