WHo IS SOPHIA?

 

Sophia Hotung is a 29-year-old Eurasian writer, illustrator, and digital artist from Hong Kong. She is the artist behind The Hong Konger and Choreopolis art collections, and is the author of The Hong Konger Anthology, The Heist of Hooded Light, and The Stowaways Symphony. Her work has been exhibited and featured at the Digital Art Fair Asia, Affordable Art Fair, Soho House, Oi Ling Antiques, and Wyndham Social.

 

WHAT IS PANGOLIN SOCIETY?

 

Through her business, Pangolin Society, Sophia works with Hong Kong charities to fundraise, raise awareness, and educate communities through art. Most recently, she has worked with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra to create a children’s storybook and educational materials, The Mission to Seafarers to create artwork and proprietary characters for merchandising, Equal Justice to create a limited edition art collection, and the Women’s Foundation to create an NFT collection with Hanson Robotics’ Sophia the Robot. Pangolin Society has raised over $300,000 in revenue for over 15 organisations in its first 18 months, and has led to Sophia’s being named the winner of SCMP’s Spirit of Hong Kong Culture Award and a two-time finalist of the American Chamber of Commerce’s Young Changemaker Award.

​

THE DISABILITY ADVOCACY PART

 

As a disabled person with seven chronic illnesses, Sophia often centres her art and writing on the disabled experience, extrapolating that with school talks and education programmes that help individuals work towards accepting and thriving within their limitations. She believes disability is not something to be overcome or battled, but managed and accepted. Her popular talk, Failure Club, has been shared across Hong Kong at international and local schools, panels, podcasts, events, and at TEDxTinHauWomen’s Speed Stories.

​

WORKING FROM BED

 

To accommodate her disabilities, Sophia spends 10 months out of each year working from various beds and clinics in San Francisco, where she lives with her husband and two dogs. These months of recuperation and treatment allow her to spend November and March back home in Hong Kong, on her feet, sharing the culmination of her year’s work, collaborations, and projects. Sophia talks openly about the limitations that her health imposes on her work life, hoping that her experiments in being “NSFW” (not shaped for work) serve as at least one example of ways non-traditional workers can still attain financial independence and accommodate their limitations.