From Home to Home

In 2024, a Hongkonger community in Oxford hosted an event for the Lunar New Year and invited me to hold a small exhibition at the church where the event took place. At that time, I had only recently arrived in the UK, and the idea of “home” felt especially meaningful to me. So I created an illustration series titled “From Home to Home,” producing more than ten pieces in total.

Among them was HongKonger, an illustration of a Hongkonger dressed in traditional British hunting attire, holding a red-white-blue bag in one hand and a bag printed with the Union Jack in the other. It was only then that I realised how everyone was essentially represented by the colours red, white, and blue (though, of course, many national flags use those three colours). The artwork was an attempt to portray how Hongkongers in the UK gradually integrate into local society.

I remember that Chris Patten was a guest speaker at the event. When he walked past this piece, he couldn’t help but smile—perhaps that, too, was a kind of British humour.

After that event, I had another opportunity to hold a small exhibition at Oxford’s Westgate Library. Although it was modest in scale, this collection of works is very meaningful to me, because it recorded the thoughts and emotions I experienced after leaving Hong Kong.