‘Crip art’: disabled artists get new Hong Kong platform, sparked by shocking job interview
- Three friends are bringing the experiences of disabled artists to the public arena following a horribly discriminatory job interview
The best ideas are often born in the most trying of circumstances. For three close friends and artists, their “aha moment” came during a very uncomfortable job interview.
Yeung Siu-fong, an installation and performance artist; Thisby Cheng, a filmmaker and video artist; and Bomb Lam, an architectural researcher, had formed a collective called c.95d8 in 2022, and been living together in a village house in Sai Kung, in Hong Kong’s New Territories.
Their struggle to find an affordable space for both living and creating ignited an audacious plan to buy a property together. They knew that securing a mortgage required proof of employment. That’s how they found themselves interviewing for an entry-level concierge position together at a security agency in September 2023.
The HR executive’s gaze fell on 34-year-old Yeung. “What’s going on with her hands?” she asked, as if Yeung had not been in the room.
Lam, who uses the pronoun “they”, says their blood boils just thinking back to the interview. “‘Er, she doesn’t have hands,’ I said. That was obvious,” Lam recalls.
