Next time you order take-away phở, don’t throw away your bamboo chopsticks; turn them into art.
This is precisely what Borneo-born artist Red Hong Yi has done. The Malaysian artist recently had the opportunity to work with Facebook on an installation in their Singapore office, however the nature of Yi's commissioned work was a little unusual: Facebook wanted her to create a mural using only chopsticks as the art piece was to be displayed right beside the office’s cafeteria.
“I wanted to explore bamboo chopsticks as a material and experiment with alternative methods to create murals,” she shared in a post on her Facebook. “So instead of painting on the wall, I decided to set it ablaze.” After dozens of hours toiling with the work, Yi used approximately 15,000 bamboo chopsticks, which were “glued, torched, then layered again and burnt a few more times to create depth and dimension to the piece.”
As the result, Yi’s 10-meter-long mural is a unique creation that makes use of Asia’s most distinctive material – bamboo – to breathe Singapore’s soul into a work of art. The mural features local icons such as the Merlion and the lotus-shaped ArtScience Museum, interwoven with fishing boats and towering HDB buildings.
Have a peek at Red Hong Yi’s work below:
[Video via Facebook user Red Hong Yi]
