Hong Kong: Political painting · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Imagethief picked up a political painting to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 1997 hand-over of sovereignty and compared it with some other propaganda paintings: In the segment I can see, he (President Hu) is the only person who's body is completely unobstructed. He has the greatest amount of negative space around him. His hand is upraised in beneficence. He's surrounded by positive symbols; doves of peace, a pearl of harmony (at least according to the artist, peaches of longevity. He's conspicuously taller than Donald Tsang (which may be literally true). Intentionally or not, it's a case study in cult-of-personality iconography. The only difference is that instead of being surrounded by an idealized version of the common people he's surrounded by an ordered version of Hong Kong's power elite.