In early 2022, a large group exhibition in Hong Kong gathered artistic responses to the city’s fifth wave of Covid-19 and moved its first presentation online.
Titled People First, Life First: Hong Kong Anti-Epidemic Art Exhibition, the project brought together 130 painters and nearly 200 works. Its first group of images was released digitally after the exhibition was launched at the end of February.
Painting the experience of the pandemic
The works addressed medical care, temporary treatment facilities, family support and the wider public response to the health crisis. Among the paintings identified in the exhibition materials were Xie Ximan’s Seven Day Miracle Tsing Yi Shelter, Ye Yongrun’s Caring for the Old and the Young and Lai Rongchun’s The Duties of Angels.
These titles indicate the strongly documentary and commemorative character of the project. Rather than treating the pandemic as an abstract subject, participating artists focused on recognisable scenes of care, emergency organisation and collective endurance.
An exhibition designed for online circulation
The first selection was distributed through several major Chinese digital platforms and media channels. Further groups of works were scheduled for release in April, extending the exhibition through a staged online format at a time when conventional public presentation remained difficult.
The organisers also planned to review the submissions and select 140 works for a later awards exhibition. A touring presentation to secondary schools across Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territories was envisaged once public-health conditions allowed.
The exhibition reflected a broader pattern seen during the pandemic, when cultural organisations relied on digital distribution to preserve public access. In this case, the online format also created an archive of how painters interpreted a specific moment in Hong Kong’s social history.