Appreciate nature more is message for Hong Kong in artist’s mural inspired by Typhoon Mangkhut
- Hong Kong is home to about 250 native trees and more than 1,000 native plants, a number of which are being celebrated in a new exhibition at the Asia Society
- American artist James Prosek has painted a mural of Hong Kong’s flora and fauna to inspire the public to observe nature more closely and fully appreciate it
On a 16-metre-long wall at the Asia Society Hong Kong headquarters is a black-and-white mural of trees, plants, animals and birds that live or once lived in the city.
They are painted in silhouette, a style American artist James Prosek has perfected over the last 12 years. It is part of the Asia Society’s latest exhibition, “To See the Forest and the Trees”.
The mural on the back wall of the Chantal Miller Gallery depicts a banyan tree that the staff at the Asia Society have nicknamed the “Giraffe Tree”, because this particular specimen resembles the long-necked animal. There’s a Chinese fan palm, where short-nosed fruit bats like to roost, bamboo, a civet cat, yellow-crested cockatoos, which are native to Indonesia, and even a tiger, a predator that once roamed Hong Kong.
The vivid depictions in the work, called Hong Kong Flora and Fauna, are on display at the society’s base, a former British Army explosives magazine, in Admiralty. The 44-year-old artist hopes it will encourage visitors to embrace the beauty and intricacy of the city’s natural environment.
The silhouettes were inspired by a book published in 1934 that Prosek used as a child to help identify birds.
“Oftentimes, when you are looking at birds in the sky or in the tree, you are looking at them in silhouette, you aren’t even seeing the colours because they are backlit or the lighting isn’t good,” he explains.
