How a painting of a young girl about to dive into the ocean changed the life of a Hong Kong human rights lawyer

• Patricia Ho, founder of the Hong Kong Dignity Institute, a charity serving marginalised groups, first saw Veronica Green’s The Dive at an art fair with her son
• She bought the picture, of a girl poised to dive with ‘no fear in her face’, and says it continues to empower her. She hopes it does the same for her children

New Zealand-born, Italy-based contemporary artist Veronica Green’s The Dive depicts a young girl on a diving board, about to plunge into the ocean. Patricia Ho, who helps marginalised groups such as human trafficking victims and refugees both in her role as a human rights lawyer and as the founder of NGO Hong Kong Dignity Institute, explains how it changed her life.

I grew up in a mixed culture home. My dad was (investment guru) Tony Measor. He left the UK in his early 20s, left everything behind and set off for Asia. He landed in Singapore and then later in Hong Kong.

Growing up, we never tired of the crazy stories he told about his drunken escapades in Singapore and Hong Kong. Everything seemed like an adventure. What made it equally amazing to be his daughter is that he would hug us every day and tell us how much he loved us, how wonderful we were and how we could do anything we wanted when we grew up. Hearing this every day made it very real for me.

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As I started wondering about what I wanted to do with my life – concluding as soon as I left uni (at University College London) that I wanted to do everything I could to end human trafficking – the little empowering voices in my head definitely nudged me along the way.

Patricia Ho helps marginalised groups such as refugees and human trafficking victims both in her role as a human rights lawyer and as the founder of the Hong Kong Dignity Institute. Photo: Patricia Ho

I now have my own children, the oldest being 11. Early on in their lives, I wanted to impart to them at least a bit of what I got from my dad.

I remember visiting the Affordable Art Fair in 2017, and my elder son, who was four, and I both fixated on the painting The Dive. It features a young girl on a diving board, getting set to jump into the ocean. I just loved the picture of anticipation, courage and imagination of what’s to come.

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It has a very specific hope and energy. She’s got this posture of just being ready and very excited. There’s absolutely no fear in her face: she’s ready to dive into the vast ocean. I feel connected to that; I feel like I have the same freedom and courage, which has to be attributed to the way I’d never had reasons not to have courage, from a young age.

I also love that my son fell in love with it as a little boy and kept begging me to bring the piece home. He kept asking whether he could go back to it and look at it. So I spent a little fortune on it and brought it home.

I bought it after a very long walk. We walked out of the fair, but my son kept going on about it, so we walked back in. I wondered what it was that he connected with. If it was anything to do with what I loved about it, I wanted to preserve that.

It now hangs in our dining room and it continues to empower me whenever I look at it. I only hope my children will feel the same way.

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This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), the leading news media reporting on China and Asia.

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