Crushing creativity: photographer turns focus on Hong Kong’s tiger mums in new exhibition

Dutch photographer Saskia Wesseling is no stranger to achieving the right balance in her craft – but, lately, she has been searching for a different kind of balance.

For the past year, she has been trying to enrol her 11-year-old daughter in a secondary school in Hong Kong. During an interview at an international school, her daughter was asked how many medals she had won, and how many hours she had dedicated to charity work.

“My children are not tutoring every day, so they’re not as advanced academically as the other kids,” says Wesseling, who has been living in the city for the past five years with her husband and two daughters aged 9 and 11.

“How can I keep them happy by allowing them to play, but at the same time get them accepted at school?”

Wesseling realised she had to become a “tiger mum” – a mother who pressures her children to attain high levels of academic achievement – if she wanted them to succeed.

Hoping to inspire people to reconsider the roles of parents and schools in children’s education, Wesseling created her photography series, “Time to tame the tigers?”, which secured her a nomination as one of seven finalists in the WMA Masters 2018-19, a local photography award.

“We put so much pressure on children to remember things that they can easily look up online, when instead we should be encouraging them to be creative, take up hobbies and engage in sports. Without creativity, computers will be smarter than we are,” she says.