Hong Yi loves to paint, but not with a paintbrush

She was given the nickname because her name, Hong, sounds like the word ‘red’ in Mandarin. Red’s grandparents and father left Shanghai, China in the ’60s during the start of the Cultural Revolution and moved to Malaysia where she was born and raised. Growing up, she heard stories about life in China, but never imagined that one day she would find herself going to China to work.

After graduating from university in Australia, she took up an offer to work for Australian architecture firm HASSELL in their Shanghai office and was completely taken with the city. The city’s contradicting charms and chaos inspired her to start creating art using local everyday materials as her medium. Here is just a small selection of her works.

Image Credit: Hong Yi