It doesn’t matter that Sophia Hotung is not a trained illustrator; her Hong Konger prints have captured hearts all over the city
From a sportily dressed woman walking a leash-load of Hong Kong wildlife down Star Street to three wise men sailing a junk through Victoria Harbour, Sophia Hotung’s artwork peeks at city life through a witty and imaginative lens. The illustrator is behind The Hong Konger, a quirky series that reimagines covers of The New Yorker with a local twist.
The Hotung name is prestigious in Hong Kong, but the 27-year old is gaining a reputation in her own right for drawings that are threaded with nostalgia. The Hong Konger series began in March when Hotung decided to create a Hong Kong version of Saul Steinberg’s View of the World from 9th Avenue, the March 29, 1976 cover of The New Yorker, which paints Manhattan as the centre of the world and is regarded as one of the 96-year-old weekly magazine’s most memorable.
“The joke targeted expats who know Hong Kong Island well but don’t really venture to Kowloon, think the New Territories consists of rice paddy fields, and are intimidated by the sprawling mass beyond the border,” says Hotung. At first, this parody cover and subsequent ones in the same vein were intended only for Hotung’s friends, whose enthusiasm for her newfound outlet encouraged her to make more and share them. “I felt like I was on to something,” she adds.
Hotung spent time in New York while studying literature at Barnard College, a women’s school under the Columbia University umbrella, and her familiarity with the city enabled her to understand the facets of its culture that were being lampooned or elevated by The New Yorker and draw from her own Hong Kong identity to produce her series of retakes. However, her illustrations hold a more personal meaning that cuts to the emotional disconnect she felt while living between the two metropolises.
“Whenever I used to come home from boarding school or college, I wasn’t properly getting over my homesickness for Hong Kong. It was because I wasn’t just homesick for a place, but for a place during a certain time,” she says, adding that her art remains open to interpretation. “When people look at the prints, they glean their own narratives and find stories in them.”
A scroll through Hotung’s blog or Instagram feed not only shows her art and its appearances at exhibitions around town, but also the artist’s experiences living as a young disabled person.
“When people look at the prints, they glean their own narratives and find stories in them"