Hong Yi standing with her artwork Terrain (All photos: Low Yen Yeing/The Edge)
Motherhood exacted the luxury of time from artist Red Hong Yi but gave something in return — a deeper appreciation of colours and how uplifting they can be. Looking at her son’s many-hued toys set her thinking about art that makes people pause and see the good side of things, and if that is what she should focus on.
Soon after her post-natal confinement late last year, it was time to suss out Louis Vuitton’s new triplex store at Pavilion Kuala Lumpur. The French luxury fashion company had invited her to create three exclusive pieces for its latest space as well as recommend some local artists to do works for the décor.
“I told my husband, ‘This is a very important project; I need to go right now’ — and dashed out. I needed a break.” With babe in arms, her perception of time has changed. “I don’t have as much for sure, so I prioritise each moment. I have to be very intentional. That also informs my art; it makes me think about what I really want to create and why. Because it’s going to involve time.”
Louis Vuitton’s latest store officially opened on July 24 and, holding their own among its lavish range of luxury items, both iconic and new, are Hong Yi’s Terrain and Zigzag 1 and Zigzag 2, works reflecting her fresh perspective on cherishing the present more deeply and thinking in terms of generations, not just herself.
“The brand wanted a bright palette that would generate vibrant, positive feelings. This resonates with a lot of people because there’s so much in the world to be upset about if you really want to focus on that, right?”
The abstract Terrain features horizontal blocks with a canvas base on which she applied red calligraphy paper, airbrushed with bright paints. Three stripes of burnt marks give it an “imperfect” touch. It hangs across one wall in the women’s universe on Level 3, where elegant lines, rich materials and warm, earthy shades strike a fine balance with pink and red handbags, wearable trunks, flowy skirts and soft tops.
Cheerful orange, yellow, pink and red make visitors stop to gaze at the work, a whole piece of canvas folded to give it layered depth. It reminds the artist of time and place, “of where we are situated because if you cut through the earth, the terrain you see is essentially a contraction of time”.
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The burnt marks on Terrain are characteristic of her way of artmaking in the studio: “I’ve burnt some stuff in the past,” Hong Yi says modestly, without revealing she made the TIME cover of April 2021 with Climate is Everything, a part-sculpture, part-performance project the magazine approached her to do. She and her team assembled a world map using 50,000 green-tipped matches, representing trees, then lit them up — to show no country would be safe if humans ignored the climate crisis.
The totems commissioned by Louis Vuitton tell a happier story. Fashioned from metal and covered with sand, they are then painted red, yellow, orange, purple and blue, the last shade denoting water and a dreamy quality. Both stand like sentinels in the men’s universe, where cool tones and rich materials dominate, providing bright contrasts with black sportswear and shoes, leather goods, trunks, watches, furniture and home accessories.
“Traditionally, totems are things you pass down from one generation to the next. They [document] the stories of many indigenous tribes, so each time you stack something to create a totem, you tell a story.”
The stack rings her son plays with at home are like his own totem, she reckons. “To be honest, that was part of the inspiration,” says Hong Yi, who hopes to create 30 totems for an exhibition next year.
But before that, she has been asked to do an installation for the Malaysia Pavilion at World Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan. Her brief is to design a tree that shows the intertwining of the country’s diverse cultures. The event opens in April and will run for six months, with the theme Designing Future Society for Our Lives.
Thirty is also the figure for a series of artworks she is working on to record her first month of being a mother. “I gave myself a very ambitious project: Every single day, I would create a piece of art to express how I felt.”
Sooner said than done, because there was no time to spare for artsy pursuits. Instead, she started journalling and added doodles and lines to show how she felt about her new role. “I hesitated over that for a long time because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a mother or if it was on the cards for me. Now I feel very happy and am very grateful because having a child gives me a lot of meaning.”
The conflicting emotions she felt in the first few months after delivery — being awakened in the wee hours by a crying baby, the pain of breastfeeding and the joy as well as the tiredness of it all — are expressed in words hand-stitched onto 30 pieces of muslin. She wants to show them online first, but if a show shapes up, great.
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“I’m a bit scared because I feel so vulnerable sharing these things. People don’t talk about how difficult or how emotional it is. I do want to be honest with my work.”
Hong Yi, 37, is glad she is an older parent and at a point in life where her career is stable and she can take time off when needed. “I’m still very driven; I still want to do a lot of things. But right now, I’m enjoying it.”
In January this year, The Back Room gallery at Zhongshan Building, KL, represented her at ArtSG, where she exhibited Mother, featuring a red silhouette of a pregnant woman — herself — with hand-stitched words telling how she felt before and after her son’s birth, on the left and right sides of the figure. Not one for embroidery, she chose to do it because her memory of motherhood is the image of her own mum, stitching.
“I had a lot of thoughts and feelings about how I felt. I wanted the feelings to be very real and raw.” Initially, she did the embroidery. But feeding and caring for the baby soon won the day. She then hand-wrote all the words and her team took over the stitching.
Mother had visitors crowding around to read her emotions at the Singapore art fair, Hong Yi’s first. “I was really surprised that people felt quite moved; I think it really resonated with a lot of mothers.”
Her creations for Louis Vuitton mark her maiden permanent display in a store and working with the company has inspired her to aspire towards the lofty standard of finesse and craftsmanship it is known for globally.
“LV wants all the artworks to be abstract, and I’m very honoured that they approached me to be their muse and create these pieces! I’ve done figurative pieces in the past; this is the first time I’m working on abstract art.”
She remembers being taken through its other boutique at The Exchange TRX and being “blown away by the amount of detail and thought put into every item on display, from furniture to wallpaper to lighting. I feel like I want to also push myself to that same level”.
Hong Yi expresses admiration for Virgil Abloh, the brand’s late artistic director of menswear, “an amazing visionary” who had studied architecture. “I looked up to him. When you know someone like him can do it, you feel very inspired as an architect as well.”
Singer, songwriter, rapper and producer Pharrell Williams, who joined the fold as men’s creative director in February 2023, impresses her with his vision. She thinks having public figures like them “makes the brand a lot more relevant to designers and, I guess, millennials and the younger generation too”.
Art enhances the appeal of the Pavilion outlet, whose 11m exterior façade interprets the brand’s Monogram through perforated aluminium panels and offers glimpses of its plush, inviting interior. A stone staircase connects Levels 2 and 3, where a Mondrian-inspired pattern of metallic trims and light cuts are striking elements that tempt one to linger and browse.
A painted and woven straw artwork specially created by artist Mook is the highlight at a private client salon on the third level. Above it, another salon features handmade wallpaper from the French atelier of Martin Berger. Level 4, too, is where Botticino marble arches and walls with mother-of-pearl inlay beckon visitors to walk through and try ready-to-wear and shoes, or take a breather on vintage furniture upholstered in soft fabrics.
Four other Malaysians also have their artworks hanging in the store. They are Nasrul Rokes, Fendy Zakri, Fauzan Fuad and Fazrin Abd Rahman.
The brand had contacted Hong Yi to ask who among the local artists inspired her and what they did. She consulted Liza Ho, founder of The Back Room, who gave feedback on suggestions and helped curate the works.
“Working with a brand known for its rich history has been a unique experience and we are happy Louis Vuitton was very open to ideas,” Ho says. “It was natural for us to include Malaysian contemporary artists who can convey a global visual language while infusing a local flavour into the space.”
As curators and mothers, she and Hong Yi set out to find a harmonious balance between “showcasing our talent while complementing its image and interiors. And with it being a new store, we wanted to be young, exciting and distinctly local”.
This article first appeared on Jul 29, 2024 in The Edge Malaysia.
