Work

Knocking Off the Street: The Subversive Writings of Hong Kong's Grassroots Kings

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: ABSTRACT This article examines how two grassroots street artists in Hong Kong, the King of Kowloon (Tsang Tsou‐choi) and the Plumber King (Yim Chiu‐tong), intervene in the city's everyday visual order. Moving beyond celebratory collective memory narratives and easy analogies to graffiti, it frames their works as subversive urban practices that rework regimes of visibility through which authority and capital are spatialized. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and archival research, the article develops “knockoff” as an analytic lens, arguing that the subversiveness of Tsang's and Yim's practices lies in their strategic mimicry of dominant visual languages and their tactical engagements with the urban landscape. Through these knockoff tactics, they produce vernacular claims to territory, recognition, and belonging that illuminate urban inequality and the contested boundaries of power in a late‐capitalist, postcolonial city. The article thus locates the possibility for an art of resistance emerging from grassroots street practices that confront unequal urban visual regimes through the city's ordinary surfaces and circulations.

Source: City & Society

DOI: 10.1111/ciso.70035

Authors: Shizheng Liang, Zihong Zhang

Institution: University of Hong Kong

Language: English

Topic: Public Spaces through Art

Subfield: Urban Studies

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Sustainable cities and communities

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,340