The Foundation · Origins 2019

Our History

Lady Liberty Hong Kong began not as an organization, but as a statue — and like the 2019 protest movement that gave rise to it, she was leaderless, crowd-sourced, and built online.

01 — Aug 2019 · Born on LIHKG

Born on a Forum

In August 2019, at the height of the anti-extradition-bill movement, an anonymous group from Hong Kong's arts and design community gathered on LIHKG — the city's Reddit-like forum — with an idea: to give the movement a figure it could rally around. They put a set of designs to an online vote, and roughly 8,000 people chose the “Goddess of Democracy” concept, modelled in part on a young woman whose eye had been ruptured by a police projectile that summer.

HK$203,933

crowdfunded in six hours — of which ~HK$150,000 went to the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund

A yellow prototype of the statue in front of the design proposals — The shortlisted designs, and an early printed maquette

02 — The Build

Built by Many Hands

True to the movement's ethos, Lady Liberty was made by a large, distributed volunteer effort — a core group joined by separate teams for graphic design, 3D modelling and printing, metal fabrication, sculpting, and assembly, alongside the thousands who voted on the design. Standing about four metres tall and weighing some 80 kilograms, the finished figure wore a helmet, goggles, and a gas mask, with gauze over one eye; her right hand raised an umbrella, and her left held a banner reading “Free Hong Kong, Revolution Now.”

3D wireframe model of the figure on screen — 3D modelling

3D-printed head and helmet segments on a workbench — 3D-printed components

Two yellow printed maquettes with the flag — Test maquettes

Two people hand-painting the protest banner — Painting the banner by hand

03 — Sep–Oct 2019 · Into the Streets

Into the Streets

Lady Liberty was first unveiled at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on 31 August 2019, shown at a rally in Chater Garden on 6 September, and carried through the mass demonstrations of that autumn — lifted above the crowds, moving through the neon of Mong Kok by night.

The statue carried through the demonstrations, autumn 2019

04 — 13 Oct 2019 · Lion Rock

The Summit

At dawn on 13 October 2019, a team of 32 volunteers — 16 of them professional climbers — hauled her to the summit of Lion Rock, the mountain that gives its name to the city's spirit of resilience, intended as her “final resting place” and a symbol of renewed resolve.

Lady Liberty on the summit of Lion Rock, above the city in the mist

32 volunteers · 4 m · one night

To the top of Lion Rock

The statue toppled and defaced on the summit of Lion Rock

14 Oct 2019 · Toppled

She survived barely a day. On the morning of 14 October, unknown assailants defaced her with red paint, toppled her, and threw the broken pieces off the cliff. Days later, a team of volunteers recovered the shattered remains by night and carried them down the mountain.

Memory is something no one can destroy.

05 — In Exile

From Symbol to Organization

As the space for dissent in Hong Kong closed under the National Security Law, members of the movement went into exile. Those who carried the project forward re-established Lady Liberty Hong Kong as a Tokyo-based non-profit — building, from Japan, without the ready institutional ecosystem available to advocacy groups in Western capitals, and choosing instead to make their own.

In the years since, Lady Liberty Hong Kong has grown into an advocacy and cultural-preservation platform: public awareness campaigns; exhibitions across Taiwan and Japan; the Hong Kong Liberty Art Prize; digital-preservation projects such as the 3D reconstructions of the Pillar of Shame and of Lady Liberty herself; and sustained dialogue with members of the Japanese National Diet. The statue was broken, but the mission it embodied — to keep the story of Hong Kong visible, and its pursuit of liberty impossible to ignore — endures.

The Japan–Hong Kong Democracy Summit, with the Lady Liberty backdrop

A Lady Liberty maquette on a plinth among the exhibition panels in Tokyo

Today: the Japan–Hong Kong Democracy Summit, exhibitions in Tokyo, and the June 4 vigil

Sources & Further Reading