Play to Proliferate: Sign City

Are you an Instagrammer and a Hong Kong lover? This is an exhibition you cannot miss.

Once an iconic sight of Hong Kong, eye-catching signboards hanging above the streets are slowly disappearing as the city tightens its street sign regulations in recent years. To save the memorabilia of the city’s distinctive streetscape, Ken Fung and Kevin Mak, Hong Kong–based architects and founders of Streetsignhk, have been collecting old street signs around Hong Kong for the last three years.

Streetsignhk is an organisation dedicated to re-telling the story behind each of the signboards—both neon signs as well as old Chinese-character signs from mom-and-pop businesses—and preserving them. Their new exhibition on street signs “Play to Proliferate: Sign City” hopes to raise awareness of the city’s unique and vanishing street sign culture.

Held in the historical Oi! Oil Street Art Space, the exhibition features a whimsical Instagrammable mirror room filled with street signs of yesteryears, rescued and revamped in vivid colors. From street signs of nightclubs to saunas to pawn shops, the exhibits offer a glimpse into these businesses that represent another era of Hong Kong.

In addition to being a photogenic art exhibition, it’s an educational introduction to Hong Kong’s street signs.

The team will organize two family-friendly workshops: “A signboard is born” for participants to design their own signboards on transparent film and to display them in the mirror room using a projector.

There will also be information and books displayed in the exhibition to offer insights into the history, architecture and culture of signboards.

The exhibition aims to inspire the visitors to re-define how they see signboards and to demonstrate what it means to our city with or without them. It’ll certainly inspire you to look up more the next time you walk the streets.