Two rubber ducks return to Hong Kong – CNN.co.jp
A rubber duck created by artist Florentine Hoffmann in Hong Kong, May 25.
Published on Tuesday 2023.06.06 19:49 JST
(CNN) It has been 10 years since it appeared in Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong and became a hot topic. Dutch artist Florentin Hofmann’s ‘Rubber Duck’ returns with friends.
The creative studio All Rights Reserved, which organizes public art exhibitions in Hong Kong, said on Thursday that two balloon ducks created by Hoffman will float in Hong Kong waters for two weeks this month. He named his new work “Double Ducks”.
The exhibit had a test run in May, when two giant bath toy ducks were pulled by a boat off the coast of Tsing Yi, Hong Kong’s fifth largest island. At 18 meters tall, it is slightly larger than the duck that made world headlines when it was exhibited in Hong Kong 10 years ago.
On May 25, two ducks were seen during a test run in Hong Kong. /Joe Raedle/Getty Images
In a press release for the project, organizers likened the two ducks to a design in which two Chinese characters for “xi” stand side by side, meaning “double happiness” and “和” (friend). Both are symmetrical and have the same letters next to each other.
The rubber duck was invented in 2001 and first appeared in France six years later. It then appeared in Osaka, Sydney, and São Paulo, before finally arriving in Hong Kong, the special administrative region of China, in May 2013. The last time I came to Victoria Harbour, I received the attention of the whole world. For some reason, it withered overnight and then came back in a few days, which is one of the reasons it got attention.
The duck also made headlines when it was exhibited in Hong Kong, angering Chinese censors. Weeks before the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, an image of “Tank Man” has been altered to replace a line of tanks with ducks, in which an unidentified protester confronts a Chinese tank. The term “big yellow duck” has been banned on Chinese social media site Weibo.
The following year, a giant yellow toad sculpture by another artist inspired by Hoffman’s work was censored after it became a trending topic on social media for its resemblance to former Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
After its debut in Hong Kong, the big yellow duck has been floating in Seoul, Los Angeles and other cities one after another. It also collapsed suddenly in the Taiwanese city of Keelung and exploded after crashing into a sign in the Chilean capital of Santiago.
Hofmann is also known for creating large-scale artworks that reproduce everyday objects on an unexpected scale. Not only bath toys, but also plush bunnies and origami boats. In 2014, a wooden hippopotamus named “Hippo” was displayed on the River Thames in London.
Double Ducks will make another appearance in Victoria Harbor from the 10th of this month. Ahead of the exhibition, the two birds were attached to the bodies of trams running in Hong Kong and subway stations across the city.