1. An experiment with leaves and flower petals.
2. Aung San Suu Kyi made of 2000 dyed carnations.
3. A bird made out of flower petals.
4. Portrait of singer Jay Chou made out of Coffee Cup Stains.
5. Mark Zuckerberg rendered in 36 books by carefully slicing off sides of the pages.
6. Nespresso Lucio Dalla portrait with coffee cup stains.
7. Olympian Lee Chong Wei‘s portrait made of 110 shuttlecocks. Each shuttlecock has 16 feathers, so this piece was made up of about 1800 feathers.
8. Pieces of art created with food on the same white plate.
9. Pieces of art created with food on the same white plate.
10. Potrait of Malaysian singer Yuna made from thousands of musical notes.
About the Artist
Malaysian-Chinese artist-architect Hong Yi loves to paint, “but not with a paintbrush.” In a recent project, she spent a month playing with her food to create stunning images on a white plate canvas.
See Also: A Malaysian Artist Known as ‘Red’ and Her Unusual Style of ‘Painting’
Nicknamed ‘Red’ after her name ‘Hong’ (which sounds like the colour red in Mandarin), Hong Yi currently runs her own design studio from where she turns mundane objects into beautiful artwork. She was born and raised in Malaysia to a Shanghainese father who left China with Hong’s grandparents in the ‘60s during the Cultural Revolution. After graduating from university in Australia with a Master’s degree in architecture, Hong Yi ventured to the city of her father’s birth, to take on a job working for an Australian architect. She never thought she would be living and working in China, but instantly fell in love with Shanghai. Its chaotic, yet charming buzz inspired her creativity.
Hong Yi has worked with big names such as Nespresso, AT&T, Mercedes Benz, Unilever and Hewlett Packard. Her works have been featured by media around the world, including The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, ABC, CNN and The Daily Mail. 2013 was a great year for the artist, who received the ‘Perspective Global Hong Kong 2013 ’40 Under 40 Designers’ award’ and was named ‘Esquire Magazine’s 12 Brilliant Malaysians of 2013’.
Such success spurred Hong Yi to challenge the boundaries of her creativity. In an interview with designboom.com she commented “My ‘creativity with food’ series has helped me push the limits of my creativity, and has taught me to work within the confines of a very small area.”
She went on to explain; “Picasso, he has a famous quote…’all children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.’ This has influenced me to see joy and fun in ordinary, everyday items that I come across, and to paint and create objects as I feel and imagine them, not just as I see them.”
Her series of food art, entitled ‘Creativity with Food’, was created by ‘painting’ with sauces and condiments and by arranging pieces of food to compose whimsical scenes. The project lasted the 31 days of March 2013 and fans can follow her work on Instagram. ‘Red’ brought to life adorable scenes of her own imagining, such as lovers embracing under a giant bouquet of cherry tomato balloons. She also recreated paintings by famous artists, such as Edvard Munch’s ‘Scream’, which she constructed with bread crusts, prosciutto, wild rice, dried berries and herbs.
See more of Hong Yi’s work by visiting her website.
Read more:
- A Malaysian Artist Known as ‘Red’ and Her Unusual Style of ‘Painting’
- 20 Awesome Star Wars Action Figures Photographed by a Malaysian
- A Review of Jump Street Trampoline in KL: Malaysia’s First Indoor Trampoline Park
The pictures above were taken from Hong Yi’s website.
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