Translation & Transmission
Activity -Week 9 (13/06/2021)
Activity: IDOLS
RED HONG YI
One artist that I look up to is Red Hong Yi. She is a Malaysian artist that is also known as “the
artist who paints without a paint brush”. Hong Yi pursued her studies in architecture at University
of Melbourne. After she graduated, she moved to Shanghai, China to work for Australian architecture firm HASSEL.
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The thing that sparked my interests about her works are the fact that instead of making art with brushes and paint like what you would usually see, Hong Yi makes art with usual everyday items
or objects you wouldn’t have imagined to be used as some sort of “brush”. Her works consists of
mixed media installations that she creates by reinterpreting everyday materials through
accumulating objects.
Portrait of NBA Star, Yao Ming
One day in January 2012, while she was still living in China, a friend of Hong Yi helped her film her as she was dribbling a basketball with red paint to “paint” a giant portrait. Hong Yi dribbled a basketball to “paint” the portrait of the well-known former NBA player, Yao Ming. After she was finished with the portrait painting, the video of the process was put onto the internet and it quickly went viral.
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Climate is Everything
Another one of her recent works is “Climate is Everything”. It was featured as the cover for the April 26 issue of the TIME Magazine. The artwork is part sculpture, part performance art. The size of the whole canvas was 7.5 x 10 foot and its of a world map that was constructed with 50,000 green-tipped matchsticks. Hong Yi herself clarified that she made sure not to miss out on any countries no matter how small they are. The whole map itself was worked on by Hong Yi and her team of 6 people, and it took two weeks for them to finish sticking matchsticks onto the canvas.
After all the matchsticks were in place, the artwork was then set on fire, showing how global climate crisis affects everyone no matter where we live. In an interview, she mentioned about the idea behind it was “wanting to highlight a world map, where everyone’s involved, and if one place is affected, the whole place is affected.”
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Teh Tarik Man
This whole portrait is made entirely of teabags that were dipped and dyed in 10 different shades of brown and was then layered in a repeating order to form a portrait of the “Teh Tarik Man”. It took her 20,000 teabags to finish the giant portrait. The portrait shows the culture of her home, Malaysia, in a physical and symbolical manner. “Teh Tarik” is a Malay word that means “pulled tea”. Its one of the drinks served in local coffee shops in Malaysia and is also one of the local’s favorites. In the portrait, it is composed to show a man making the teh tarik, pouring it from one cup to the other. Tin cans and a shaved ice machine were “drawn” with the teabags in front of the man to serve as props for the scene.
This piece was commissioned by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and was later presented there in the Malaysian building.
Hong Yi, being known as “the artist that paints without a paintbrush”, is known to use ordinary, everyday objects to create her artworks. In an interview that happened in June 2020, she was asked that since she has used and experimented with a variety of objects and materials, what other materials that she hasn’t tried out yet but would like to work with in the future. Her reply to that at the time was that she was focusing on using bamboo and using fire and soot to “draw” at that time. She stated that she hoped to focus on using limited materials in hopes to refine her technique and skills with them for now.
Studio Hong Yi
Hong Yi founded Studio Hong Yi in January 2013 when she was still in Shanghai. She said that she wants to continue making art using mundane, ordinary everyday objects that you wouldn't think of using as a paint brush. The reason for that was because she wanted to show people that everything around us can be used as some sort of material and has potential to be made into art. She hopes that her art could help people around the world to connect with each other.
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CHRISTOPH NIEMANN
Christoph Niemann was born in 1970 in Waiblingen, Germany. He is known as an artist, author, and animator. He studied graphic design at the State Academy of Fine Art in Stuttgart, Germany and graduated in 1997. After he graduated from the academy, he moved to New York and worked as an illustrator. Christoph has worked with some companies, with a few of them being: The New Yorker, National Geographic, Wired, and The New York Times Magazine where his works were featured on the covers regularly. Other than magazines, he has also illustrated ads for other companies like Nike, Microsoft, and Amtrak. He has even helped Google to create some of their popular animations. Other than being known for his illustrations, Christoph has also written and illustrated books, few of them being “The Pet Dragon” and “I LEGO N.Y.”. When he was 29 years old, Christoph became the youngest to join the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).
Abstract City
Christoph started a visual blog for the New York Times website called “Abstract City” in 2008. In “Abstract City”, the contents were inspired by the desire of Christoph while he was in New York. The food, music, pop culture, and family life are what he takes as inspiration to create the blog. Instead of sticking to one thing, Christoph plays around with mixed media for each piece of content. He tried various media, it can go from drawing with coffee on napkins, to Lego, from hand sewn dolls, to autumn leaves.
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Sunday Sketching
This book features the doodles that Christoph made on Sundays. For the durations of a few years, Christoph spent every Sunday sitting in front of a different item every time and coming up new ways to doodle and incorporate the object with his doodles with the help of a little bit of his sense of humor. In an interview, he describes this made up doodle ritual of his as a form of “exercise in seeing”. He’s doodled with a pair of bananas as the back of a horse, highlighters as light sabers, a sock as a t-rex head and many more interesting ones.
The Pet Dragon
This is a children's book illustrated by Christoph Niemann. The story of this book is about a girl named Lin. Her pet dragon disappeared mysteriously one day, so she went on a journey to find her dragon. The illustrations in this book are cleverly made so that the object discussed has a resemblance to the Chinese characters. This way, the illustration and Chinese characters makes learning for children more unique and interesting. The placement of each elements in the book also makes learning more memorable for the kids and thus cause it to leave an imprint on their memories.
Self-Reflection
The two artist I chose are Red Hong Yi and Christoph Niemann. What makes me look up to Red Hong Yi is because I admire the way she makes her artwork, using non conventional objects and materials as a form of "art supply". It goes to show that anything around us can be used as art material and its not necessary that we need expensive supplies to make art. I found out about her few years ago when a lecturer mentioned her works and I looked into it. She uses coffee stains on a mug to make portraits and even collaborated with brands like Uniqlo which I found amazing as I never expected it when I first saw a post of their collaboration on social media. What I feel like I could learn from her is how open minded she is on trying out anything to be experimented and used as art materials. The reason for that is because even if I do try to experiment with materials, I would always not think of or use any food items. So, in the future I was thinking that I should try out and experiment with any materials including using foods also. Another thing I could learn from her would be her art process when creating a piece. I was never good at art processes as I might forget something or rush a project. Sometimes I won't even experiment much on an art style I might be looking for as I felt burnt out or unmotivated to do so too.
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For Christoph Niemann, I found out about him not long ago but I find his illustrations to be really fun and creative. I've always loved illustrations and that's why I picked him for this activity. His illustrations allows people to see a new side of an object that they would never have thought. An example being the illustrations in Sunday Sketching: A banana acts as the behind of a horse, a compass as the top part of a penguin, a sock as a t-rex head, and many more. I would have to try thinking and seeing things around me in a different point of view. This is something I've been trying to improve but for now I am still struggling a bit with it. I guess I'll have to work on how I can interpret things differently to make my projects more unique and interesting.