Title: Hood II

Year: 2024

Media:  Acrylic on canvas

Size: 50 x 40 x 2cm

About the work: Hood II is part of a series investigating the black hoods arrested suspects in Hong Kong have been made to wear since the late Colonial era. While ostensibly there to protect their presumption of innocence, as a child growing up in Hong Kong I found it made suspects seem intimidating and inhuman instead. This series is an exercise in communicating the inherent humanity and character of my sitters while also obstructing much of their identifying features. 

Bio: James Joshua Li 李皓庭 is a Hong Kong-born Brighton-based British Neo-Surrealist painter. His work is inspired by a collective nostalgia for a Hong Kong that never existed through the lens of late cultural theorist Mark Fisher’s notion of 'Hauntology’, and the absurdity of Western colonisation.