King of Kowloon: The Life and Art of Tsang Tsou-choi

One of the world's earliest graffiti artists, Tsang’s work can also be seen through the lens of outsider art, protest art, contemporary Chinese calligraphy, and even performance due to the public nature of his writing.

As opposed to the "Four Treasures" (brush, inkstone, paper, and inkstone) required in traditional Chinese calligraphy, Tsang preferred a common brush cheap bottled ink, and any available surface that would hold the sticky penetrating ink.

Tsang's calligraphy on the back of signage at the Star Ferry dock.

Tsang also wrote extensively in marker on long rolls of cheap paper. He wrote constantly, almost automatically, often replacing exhausted markers mid-text. After moving into the elderly home in 2004, Tsang's nurses forbade him from using the pungent Chinese ink and Tsang was limited to writing exclusively in marker.

While Tsang is best remembered for covering Hong Kong’s ubiquitous grey electrical boxes with characters, he would literally write on every surface and material he could find. Walls, bridges, lampposts, signs, posters, lamps, t-shirts, tea kettles, paper, wood panel and more, all formed a never-ending three-dimensional canvas for Tsang’s relentless brush.

Described as an “urban poet” by curator Hans Ulrich-Obrist, Tsang writing includes dates, locations, family’s ancestry, curses, and most often, his claim as the King of Kowloon. The language is fragmented, omits punctuation, and typically repeats the same themes and phrases across writings.

Following literary form, Tsang's text flows from top to bottom but not always from right to left as it should. He played with character scale and composition, varying sizes and even laid large characters across the top of multiple small ones, demonstrating a keen sense of graphical wordplay.

In 1997, writer Lau Kin-wai curated the first solo exhibition of Tsang's writings at Goethe-Institut in Hong Kong. The exhibition raised questions about whether Tsang should be considered an artist and whether his work belonged in a gallery. Nevertheless, later in the year Tsang was included in the landmark 'Cities on the Move' exhibition curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hou Hanru. The show traveled from P.S.1 in New York, to Hayward Gallery in London, Louisiana Museum in Denmark among others. Later exhibitions included Johnson Chang's 1999 'Power of the Word' traveling exhibition, and the 2003 Venice Biennale curated by Hou Hanru.

Beyond the white cube, Tsang Tsou-choi made cameo appearances in several films and television ads, inspired fashion designers, and has been the subject of numerous articles from Ming Pao Weekly to the New York Times. His presence and influence lasted generations, though recently has faded as all but a handful of his writings have been destroyed or covered over.

On July 15, 2007 at the age of 85, Tsang Tsou-choi suffered a fatal heart attack at the elderly home.

Nearly sixty years after his first writing, the King of Kowloon remains one of Hong Kong’s most widely known and internationally exhibited visual artists, and is a part of the collective memory of Hong Kong.