The protests in Hong Kong the summer and fall of 2019, (re)ignited when the administration of Hong Kong, headed by chief executive Carrie Lam, proposed an extradition agreement that would allow China, amongst other nations, to extradite suspects for prosecution. [1] The fear in the general population in Hong Kong was that this would allow the Chinese state to prosecute political dissidents that had so far felt relatively safe in Hong Kong. The demonstrations and mass rallies grew in strength beginning in June 2019 and culminated with the weeklong intense and violent siege of Hong Kong Polytechnic University in November 2019. The protests faded out with the advent of the coronavirus outbreak in February 2020 and was given the final death blow with the introduction of the new national security legislation in June 2020.

European and North American media outlets have primarily shown the protests in Hong Kong through the weekly demonstrations, violent clashes with the police and the large-scale mass rallies. However, people living in Hong Kong during the protests will most certainly also have noticed the massive amounts of visual protest material present on the more than 150 protest walls scattered across the territory. Every footbridge, underpass, metro station, tunnel system or available wall in Hong Kong was turned into a hotspot for distribution of visual protest material – and the material on these walls was renewed on a daily basis reflecting events on the streets and on the political arena. Visual protest material, online as well as in physical space, played a crucial role for the movement, in the formation of their political imaginary of a Hong Kong free of Chinese influence, and as means to affect the public opinion.