Florentijn Hofman’s ‘Rubber Duck’ returns to Hong Kong — and now there are two

Mar 07, 2023

A decade since it famously appeared in Victoria Harbour, Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman's "Rubber Duck" sculpture has returned to Hong Kong. And this time it has a friend.

Creative studio AllRightsReserved, which often orchestrates public art displays in the city, announced Thursday that a pair of Hofman's inflatable ducks will float in Hong Kong's waters for two weeks later this month. The company dubbed the new installation "Double Ducks."

In an apparent test run for the installation, the two outsized bath toys were spotted being tugged by boats in the waters off Tsing Yi, the territory's fifth largest island in May. At 18 meters (59 feet) tall, they are slightly larger than the one that made global headlines when it was installed in Hong Kong 10 years ago.

In a press release announcing the project, organizers compared the inflatable duo to the symmetrical Chinese characters "xi" (known as "double happiness") and "peng" (friend), both of which feature two identical components next to one another.

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"Double duck is double luck," Hofman said in a statement. "The work emphasizes friendship and getting connected … ‘Double Ducks’ is not about looking into the past but enjoying the moment together!"

Conceived in 2001 before debuting in France six years later, "Rubber Duck" appeared in cities including Osaka, Sydney and Sao Paolo before arriving in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory in May 2013. (Although Hofman's ducks all look alike, he makes a new one for each location.) But the artwork's previous arrival in Victoria Harbour made a splash worldwide — in part because it mysteriously deflated overnight before being reinflated days later.

The duck's stint in Hong Kong was also notable for attracting the ire of China's censors. Installed just weeks before the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre that year, the sculpture started appearing on altered versions of "Tank Man," the famous photo of an unidentified protester standing up to Chinese military tanks. Social media users began sharing images in which rubber ducks replaced the line of tanks, leading to the term "Big Yellow Duck" being blocked on the Twitter-like platform Weibo.

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The next year, images of another artist's giant yellow sculpture of a toad, inspired by Hofman's work, was also censored after social media users likened it to former Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

In the years since first arriving in Hong Kong, "Rubber Duck" has appeared in the waters of cities such as Seoul and Los Angeles. The artwork unexpectedly deflated in the Taiwanese city of Keelung, while in Santiago, Chile, it burst after accidentally crashing into a sign.

Hofman is known for producing other large-scale art installations reimagining everyday objects at unexpected scales — not only bath toys, but also toy rabbits, paper boats and a wooden hippo named HippopoThames, which he installed on London's River Thames in 2014.

The "Double Ducks" are set to return to Victoria Harbour on June 10. Ahead of the installation, images of the pair have been pasted on the side of the city's trams and at subway stations around Hong Kong.