Paint It Red

Hong Yi creates unconventional art pieces that are highly influenced by her upbringing and nuanced with cultural references. A chance move of uploading a video of her creating an artwork on YouTube completely altered the trajectory of her life.

- Lorraine Chai

Born and raised in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Hong Yi is an artist-cumarchitectural designer who first came to be in the public eye when back in 2012, she shared a video of herself working on a portrait of Yao Ming, the renowned basketball player. The experimental portrait was created with a basketball dipped in red paint and the result was nothing short of impressive. It became her life-changing piece of work when the video went viral overnight and even the National Basketball Association (NBA) reposted it on its website. Today, that video has accumulated a million views.

Affectionately known as Red, she is dubbed ‘the painter who paints without a paintbrush’. This creative artist garnered fame on the international stage through works of art that are created with everyday materials, such as teabags, chopsticks, eggshells and even coffee mug stains. Instead of merely creating pieces that are aesthetically pleasing, Red constantly challenges herself to explore and reinterpret art, in the process defining her identity as an unconventional contemporary artist.

IN THE MAKING

Red didn’t have the beginning typical of many artists. She holds a Master of Architecture degree and has had experience working in Shanghai at a renowned international architecture firm. Growing up, Red often dabbled in art. From a young age, she was exposed to great painters like Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh by her mother and was also influenced by her dad’s great skill in technical drawing. “I spent time on art, but also enjoyed maths and science – so architecture was like a middle ground for me,” she shares.

Red names her art teacher as one of the people who had the most influence in her life.