SNA (Taipei) — Paintings by traumatized Hong Kong protesters have gone on display for the first time in Taiwan, with the images of despair and hope that lay bare their enduring anguish.

An exhibition in Taipei includes more than forty works by unnamed Hongkongers who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from their time on the frontlines of the often violent protests in 2019 and 2020.

The protesters painted the torment in their minds with the help of art therapy. Taken together, the works suggest the traumatization of an entire generation as authorities now work to stamp out all opposition voices and dissent in Hong Kong.

The exhibition’s name, which translates as “What Doesn’t Kill Us Is Only a Graze,” is a phrase that went viral among Hong Kong protesters after being spotted in Ganrenji temple in Gifu Prefecture. The slogan offered comfort and hope to some in their battle against authorities in Hong Kong.

The art was shipped to the Hong Kong Outlanders, a group of young Hongkongers based in Taiwan. They have organized the nine-day exhibition that ends January 17.

A group of individuals that wished to remain anonymous helped the former protesters express their trauma through painting, said the group’s secretary-general, who publicly identifies herself as “Justine” out of fears for her safety.

“These are amateur works, but the emotions that went into the paintings are very, very real,” says Justine. “We thought we would receive something very dark, because the Hong Kong situation is not getting any better at all. But in fact we have received the best paintings we could have expected. They show hope and persistence and encouragement, so we decided to display them all.”

One painting is a series of thick black brushstrokes expressing the confusion in the artist’s mind. In the accompanying caption, the artist speaks of freedom being “the most fundamental right of a human being,” but asks: What is real freedom, and what is it that Hongkongers have sacrificed so much for?

Another painting with the title, “Fear and Hope, I Choose Hope,” depicts what could be a night or dawn, with tiny little lights that might represent people, or freedom and light. The caption includes a quote that the artist attributes to the 12 Years a Slave movie: “A lot of times you don’t choose to hold on because there is hope; you held on, and so there is hope.”

Other works visualize police beating a bloodied protester, and mobile phone texts checking on whether others are safe.

The exhibition, which is housed in a former dormitory for government employees during the Japanese colonial era, has a collection of books, as well as photographs of the unrest that were shared on Instagram by two Hong Kong artists.

The display comes amid a widening crackdown on Hong Kong by Chinese authorities. Last week, police arrested more than fifty activists and former lawmakers in connection with an unofficial primary election in July that authorities say was part of a plan to subvert state power. It was the biggest move against Hong Kong’s democracy movement since Beijing imposed a harsh national security law on the city last June. This was in response to the huge protests that began in 2019 against an extradition bill that would have allowed suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial, and later morphed into calls for democratic reform and the most serious challenge to the Chinese Communist Party’s rule in Hong Kong.

Beijing has since managed to snuff out protests since bringing in the law, which outlaws anything that authorities consider subversive with up to life in prison. Beijing says that this has brought “stability” back to Hong Kong.

Justine said the purpose of the exhibition is to raise awareness of what is going on back home, because “we can see the Hong Kong situation is going way worse and way quicker than we thought.”

She said that it isn’t just protesters who are suffering psychologically. A lot of other Hongkongers “suffer from a certain degree of trauma just by looking at how Hong Kong (has gone) down so quickly, a place that they love and were born and raised in.”

“I think in general Hong Kong people behave so differently now, even for us we’re really scared to tell other people our names because we want to hide our identity, and the first thing when we wake up we’re always checking our phones to see what happened in Hong Kong. We’re always checking with our friends and relatives in Hong Kong to see if they’re okay,” she added.

“And sometimes we just dream about events in Hong Kong, as well as the news and the sounds–the tear gas when they fired a canister of tear gas, the popping sound–even though we weren’t there, but we were all watching, streaming videos or live news from a computer, and this really kind of branded into our brains.”

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