HONG KONG — “Courage” is hand-painted in English and Chinese on Wilson Shieh’s T-shirt, an indication of the more vocal stance the Hong Kong artist has decided to take in recent months.

During the city’s pro-democracy march on July 1, the 15th anniversary of its handover to Beijing, Mr. Shieh, whose art sells for tens of thousands of dollars, stood on the street distributing hundreds of his prints for free. On them, he had drawn the faces of key mainland Chinese and Hong Kong politicians organized on a chart, with former Communist Party official Jiang Zemin, clad in pajamas and reclining on a pillow, at the top.

In the late-1990s, when it was hard to imagine a thriving international art fair in Hong Kong or Western galleries opening outposts in the city, Mr. Shieh became a favorite of local curators and collectors. In the then-nascent contemporary art scene, he stood out for combining skill at traditional Chinese fine-brush painting with a Hong Kong sense of fantasy and irony. In his 1999 “Animal Series,” pairs of stylishly dressed human figures mimicked penguins, koalas and other fauna. A subsequent series, dubbed “Architecture,” imagines women as famous buildings in Hong Kong and elsewhere.

His newer works diverge from his earlier, “prettier” style, instead embracing current events and social commentary. On Sept. 15, Mr. Shieh opens “The Repository of Coherent Babbles,” a group exhibition that he is curating with work by himself as well as younger local artists like Ho Sin-tung and Joey Leung. The show, at Exit Gallery @ Southsite, is the first in a series of five artist-organized exhibits focusing on Hong Kong painting from the 1950s.

Mr. Shieh, 41 years old, whose work recently showed at London’s Saatchi Gallery, spoke to the Journal about art, politics and nudity. Below are edited excerpts from the interview.

When it comes to art, what’s more important: the aesthetics or the statement?

Mr. Shieh: In the early days, with every work I was very conscious that it should be eye-catching and strong enough to convey my idea. But now, I have become more conscious about being more direct in what I want to say.

What happened?

It’s an urge, a change of identity of an artist in Hong Kong because of the rapid changes in our society and in our art scene.

Has the job of the artist changed, in your view?

Art is supposed to be for people to express ideas, emotions. Showing my work in galleries and art spaces since the 1990s, I find the audience is quite limited. It’s usually the same group of art professionals. Now I try new platforms to show my works. At the same time I try to use my works to educate and let people know what art is, or what art is about, and what a Hong Kong artist like me is doing.

What development has affected the Hong Kong cultural scene the most?

The West Kowloon Cultural District project. It’s still an empty space, but because the government promised to spend the money to build this, many local people, media and art professionals around the world started to have more interest in Hong Kong art. Before that, Hong Kong artists were very marginal.

And now they are not?

Most people still don’t understand artists, but now we are more visible. In the Fotan [district] every January we open our studios. We now have more than 10,000 visitors over two weekends. Back in 2004, we had only a few hundred. People are really interested to look at artists, even if they aren’t interested in going to the galleries and looking at the art. They come to the studios because they want to know what the working space is like or what artists look like. I think this is good. When you go to the gallery to look at the work, there is a distance, but here they can see my space, they can go to my toilet, they can ask me questions, take photographs. Which means they are interested but need to find another way to come closer to art.

Are you political?

The first time I joined a protest was in 1989, after the June 4 Tiananmen crackdown. I’d just finished high school. I learned we have to fight for our rights. I go to some Hong Kong protests, but not all, because there are too many every week. For the July 1 demonstrations, I participated in seven in the last 10 years. This year, I try to do more than just walking, so I made that poster for the people. It tries to inform, to help people understand China’s government, to know their faces, their titles, the relationships.

Tell me about the September show you’re helping to organize.

It’s a Hong Kong painters’ group exhibition. In Hong Kong for the last few decades, the most influential painting style has been Western-influenced, abstract ink painting, with an emphasis on the visual element, giving up the figurative narrative. In the 1990s, a new trend emerged. It’s a postmodern style. It’s very Hong Kong, a hybrid. Although I use ink, it looks like illustration and combines traditional Chinese practice, figurative drawing, some local culture, some surrealism, imagination. I paint about movies and politics because people can relate to them easily. Hong Kong people respond to dark humor because they don’t like very hardcore protests. The only way to get more and more people involved is to make the whole movement more entertaining.

The solo project you’re working on, a handmade book, includes nude drawings of yourself. What’s the idea behind that?

I became an artist because I want freedom. Being naked is feeling free. I have this tent in the picture, because now it’s like I’m going back to my own campsite, Hong Kong. I want to focus on Hong Kong and myself now in my art. I have those animals on that page—all animals are naked, free.