Artist South Ho originally created “Defense and Resistance in 2011 to express “the confrontation between Hong Kong people and tourists from mainland China in recent years.”

At the Asia Society Hong Kong Centre Exhibition, a sequence of photos show how he built a wall around him, with a glistening blue Hong Kong harbour behind him.  The tumbling red bricks nearby have the words “Made in Xianggang” – the Mandarin way of saying Hong Kong.

The brick wall was built to “defend one’s own interest” and to highlight the confrontations that the people of Hong Kong face daily with the influx of mainland tourists invading Hong Kong.  Yet a wall of lose structure is an encumbrance which is contrary to its original intent, in that it represents the contradictions in Hong Kong after it was returned to Chinese sovereignty.