Welcome to Made in Asia, Lifestyle Asia’s podcast series that aims to connect the cultural dots and communities across Southeast Asia through storytelling. In collaboration with CelcomDigi | One™ Plan, we explore the overarching theme “Meaningful Connections” that extends from the theme “Community” in the pilot episodes. We discuss what it means to build strong, trusted emotional connections with the people around us, especially in today’s ever-changing and fast-paced lifestyle. In this episode, we are joined by Red Hong Yi, the Sabah-born artist known for using unconventional art forms to tap into her roots, all while breaking boundaries.
For a while now, Red Hong Yi has been unofficially known as “the artist who paints without a paintbrush”. What this means is that she chooses to work with a different set of tools. One of her earliest works that eventually went viral on YouTube featured her making art using nothing but a large canvas, a bowl of red paint and a basketball. She’s also done a portrait of Jackie Chan made out of 64,000 chopsticks, and another artwork of hers called “Teh Tarik Man” was created using 20,000 dyed teabags at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Suffice it to say, Red is out of the ordinary. One of her latest projects, titled “I’m a Mum?!” was a deeply personal exploration of her own complex journey with motherhood, expressed through hand-stitched embroidered pieces created during her confinement period, a bed installation, body imprints from her pregnancy, and various sculptures.
“I think I wanted to be as raw and honest about my experience as possible,” Red shares. “It’s a beautiful experience but it’s always been so ‘gentle, soft, beautiful’, a kind of ‘perfect’-looking thing and mums always knew what to do. But I found it very chaotic and very emotional, and very raw. After the birth of my first child, I really wanted to capture again the feelings and emotions. So I journalled how it felt every single day, the first 30 days, and I wanted to embroider and exhibit that somehow, one day.”
In this episode, we speak with Red Hong Yi about how she first discovered—and later navigated—the art scene, building her own community and platform for other artists, and also her personal experience with motherhood and how she chooses to document it through her art.
On the topic of connection, CelcomDigi this year introduced its newest flagship plan: the CelcomDigi One™ Plan, meticulously built around the idea of having everything a modern household relies on consolidated into a single plan — connectivity, convenience, entertainment, and 3 unlimited 4G/5G mobile lines for everyone in the family, all under one roof.
On young modern artists taking up unconventional forms of art
Over the years, Red has gotten recognised—even internationally— for her unconventional art style. Since her early days, she went on to use different and even more unusual types of artistic medium such as eggshells, matchsticks, flowers, ink stamps made from vegetables. She recalls a piece that she did with fellow artist Kenji Chai, which later led to the cover she created for TIME Magazine.
“The idea was that we would burn it down in a warehouse,” Red opens up about the collaborative piece she and Kenji worked on back in 2019 to draw awareness about the wildfires in Borneo. “I was overly confident, and it was very dangerous. We thought kerosene would make it a lot more dramatic. This was pre-AI days, too. So the moment we did the piece, the fire just suddenly exploded and immediately our friends went in with the fire extinguishers. We were so shocked. It didn’t go according to plan. But if you look at the video, you wouldn’t be able to tell. So, I think what you see online doesn’t tell the whole story always, most of the time. But yeah, that was behind the scenes of what happened.”
With new technology, it’s become apparent that young modern artists have been wanting to engage in more unconventional art forms, and to this, Red says, “You can do what you want to do as long as you’re resourceful, and you keep your mind open broadly and creatively. I feel that there is room for everyone. There are more and more young people paving their own paths and doing their own thing, which is exciting. This is the best time to do it, especially compared to previous generations. I feel like the world is really your oyster. If you think innovatively, you can do things yourself. It’s about self-expression. It’s about doing things the way you see the world.”
On building a collective, and the future of Red
Red has also recently launched her own gifting brand that she lovingly dubs ‘Date with Red’. The idea came from when she was in the confinement centre after the birth of her second child earlier this year. “I had red date tea, and it reminded me again of my time in China, and I think it all goes back to my time in Shanghai,” she shares. Her father had grown up in Shanghai, and she would also go on to spend some time living there and growing close to her relatives. “I’ve expressed my memories and longing for what I experienced there through art, and I thought, ‘What other senses are there? There’s also taste, smell. And red dates remind me of Shanghai. They’re used in other different ways, and I felt very cared for when I was in the confinement centre. And I thought, how do I channel this into a product where other people can feel cared for?”
On the topic of building connections with other people, since she properly moved to live KL in the 2020s, Red knew immediately to be close to the artist community. She rented a place near The Zhongshan Building and got to know a lot of the artists around the area. “In the last few years, I’ve been running this exhibition called ‘1000 Tiny Artworks’. Every time we do it, we curate a hundred artists to curate tiny artworks, about 10x10cm only. I guess that’s a way of gathering collectors and artists, making it more accessible, and also getting the artist community around.”
Hosted by Martin Teo, Editor-in-Chief of Lifestyle Asia KL & SG, Made In Asia headlines ‘Community’ for its pilot season and ‘Live Your Peak’ for the second season, now followed by the theme ‘Meaningful Connections’ in its third season. Stay tuned as we bring you fresh conversations with some of the brightest trailblazers and voices in Malaysia and Singapore.
Special thanks: Four Siblings, Kimpton Naluria Kuala Lumpur by IHG
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Note : The information in this article is accurate as of the date of publication.
