Malaysian artist Red Hong Yi is now a mother: 'I’m still shook!'

Malaysian artist Red Hong Yi took to Instagram today (Jan 18) to announce the birth of her baby boy in October 2023. — Photo: Screenshot: Instagram/redhongyi

Malaysian artist Red Hong Yi took to Instagram today (Jan 18) to announce the birth of her baby boy in October 2023.

"I have a huge personal update: I am a MOTHER! I’m still shook TBH!" she wrote in the post.

She also posted several 'before and after' photos of herself in front of artwork that was inspired by her experience of being pregnant and being a mother.

"These before-after photos were taken a day before I was admitted to the hospital in October 2023, and when my baby boy was 10 weeks old in January 2024," she wrote.

"The experience from pregnancy to birth to figuring out how to take care of a baby has been such an emotional, overwhelming, beautiful, stressful, nerve-wrecking experience. There have been days when I’d be nursing my baby in the middle of the night and I’d think...HOW do mothers do this?! I truly have so much newfound respect for mothers".

According to her, "the whole experience and new identity" inspired her to create a whole new series of artwork titled, “MOTHER!”, on some of which she printed the profile of her pregnant body.

One of the pieces will be on display at The Back Room KL's booth in Singaporean art fair ART SG 2024 from today (Jan 18) until Jan 21.

Red Hongyi shot to fame in 2012 when she painted a large-scale portrait of basketball player Yao Ming in 2012 using nothing but a basketball dipped in red paint. She is well-known for painting her unconventional use of different materials such as tea leaves, chopsticks, salt, cake sprinkles and even eggshells in her artworks.

She is also known for creating a 2019 cover image for a Time magazine issue on climate change, a "part sculpture, part performance art" piece that consisted of a large world map made out of 50,000 green-tipped matchsticks that was then set on fire in order to represent "how the global climate crisis touches all of us, no matter where we live”.