Pun Sing-lui

Pun Sing-lui (Chinese: 潘星磊; pinyin: Pān Xīnglěi) is a mainland-trained performance artist and Hong Kong resident. His most notable and contested work is Red Action, which he staged after he attended the June Forth vigil held annually in Victoria Park in Hong Kong in 1995. This performance was covered by many local and international press and art historical studies as it was seen as a response to colonial politics, as well as an act of "artistic urge" and vandalism. Some consider it as "the most famous political stunt in Hong Kong history".

Early life and education Pun was a participant of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. A photograph of him going on a hunger strike during the protests was featured on the cover of Le tremblement de terre de Pékin, a 1991 book about the uprising written by French authors Michel Bonnin, Jean-Philippe Béja, and Alain Peyraube.

In 1992, Pan graduated from the Sculpture Department Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and immigrated to Hong Kong.

Renowned vandalism Pan's most well-known performance work is named Red Action. On 16 September 1996, shortly before Hong Kong's handover to China, Pun covered the bronze statue of Queen Victoria in a public park with a layer of red paint, and smashed its nose with a hammer. The statue was subsequently restored, at a cost of $150,000. Artist and art critic Leung Po Shan Anthony argued that this act evoked fear among Hong Kong people of the Cultural Revolution and the prospect of future Communist rule. It was criticized as an "outdated act of resistance" by nationalism against colonialism, and it highlighted a "severe divergence" in the emotional fabric between the people of Mainland China and Hong Kong.