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Twinkle Twinkle Little Guys Art Project by Kila Cheung

We believe that everyone in this city can shine.

In Hong Kong, the most common and most neglected light comes from road warning lights. Warning lights are found everywhere in our city where thousand of construction works are in progress every day. We can find them on roadside, footbridges, bicycle tracks, pedestrian crossings and construction sites etc. When evening falls, they will light up automatically to caution people. They vigorously blink and blink without attracting special attention, they are like small potatoes in the big city. 
The shape of warning lights resembles human beings, inspiring me to paint on top of them.
Amber Au and I worked together for the Twinkle Twinkle Little Guys 30 days project in the summer of 2017. I am a full time artist specialized in painting and sculptures; Amber is working in radio station hosting programs about Arts and Culture and also stories of local people. We purchased 30 warning lights and started our project. I painted different faces on the lights and then we placed them at different corners of Hong Kong continuously for 30 days, we called the lights Twinkle Twinkle Little Guys.
Each Little Guy has its own personality, representing different Hong Kong people. We created voices for each Little Guys, e.g. Little Goodbye - ‘After my last day on earth, my body will gradually change into nutrients; my spirit will link with my loved ones.’ We put Little Goodbye in Hung Hom near the funeral parlour. There was a piece of beautiful grass slope matching perfectly with Little Goodbye;
Little Waiter - ‘My love and smiling face are free truly from my heart. If you are my old customer who always come to chit chat, please come and have a drink!’ We put Little Waiter outside a closed down tea restaurant in Tai Hang Sai Estate located in Shek Kip Mei.
Other members of the Little Guys include Little Jizo, Little Sportsman, Little Peace, Little Native, Little PC 167, Little Wrestler and Little Cat, Little Sailor, Little Puppy Rocker, Little Prince Moon, Little Ash, Little Super me, Little Brainstorming, Little Reader,
Little Astronaut, Little Shooting Star, Little Big Brother, Little Rascal, Little Blushed Face, Little Sunday, Little Native II, Little Lady Boss, Little Guest, Little Kwan Kung and Little Kwun Yum, Little Sumo Wrestler, Little Puppet, Little Toxic Mushroom, Little Life Guard and Little ‘We’.
The progress of the project was updated on Facebook and Instagram every day, attracting people to search for the Little Guys in the city and also media coverage. The number of follower of the project was far more than our expectations.
Then, people started to share their experiences of searching for Little Guys with us through social media. One lady told us that Little Guest witnessed the start of her relationship with boyfriend; One couple celebrated their anniversary with the journey of finding Little Guys; One couple created their own Little Guy and put it in where they found Little Big Brother on the Christmas Night; One little boy kept asking his mom to search for Little Guys with him and finally they found Little Native II; One told us that she was a construction worker and her duty was to change the batteries of warning lights in the construction site; One said that he talked with the old shopkeeper about longevity for an hour in where Little Reader stayed.
We post the details of Little Guys online, people went offline to look for them in the real world. In their journeys, they went to places that they had never been; they met strangers; they obtained their unique experience. After that, they went online to share their stories with us. In this project, we discovered the beauty of the online/offline interaction. The encounters of Little Guys and people were precious.

I believe that we may all use our imagination to make the city a little different.
Twinkle Twinkle Little Guys 30 Days Project documentary ( English + Chinese subtitles) :
Twinkle Twinkle Little Guys Exhibition

In January 2018, we were invited to hold an exhibition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Guys in Gallery by the Harbour of Harbor City. In the exhibition, we had a chance to gather all the stories about this project. We investigate the histories of the places where we had put Little Guys. We also collected stories from the audiences.
The exhibition was like a gathering of old and new friends. The ‘old friends’, who were actually strangers to us, told us about their experience of searching for Little Guys.
When creating Little Guys, we give each of them a story. After putting them on the street, audiences created new stories with them. The magic of Little Guys is to let people feel warm and make them smile. I believe the reason behind is the fact that we are all little guys.
A little imagination on a little ordinary object shows that  Hong Kong people can shine.
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