Unconventional Malaysian Artist Creates Stunning “Merlion” Mural For Facebook Singapore

May 23, 2016

Red Hong Yi, the popular Malaysian artist who “paints without a paintbrush,” has created another masterpiece, this time of a mural made entirely out of chopsticks.

Known for amazing works of art using unconventional materials, Red was tapped by Facebook Singapore to create a mural made of bamboo chopsticks on their office’s 33-foot bare wall, reported Asia One.

She revealed the project via a Facebook post on May 18 which included a video of her working on the task by meticulously piecing together the bamboo chopsticks. She can be seen using a blowtorch to set the sticks on fire in order to add color and dimension to her work.

“I wanted to explore bamboo chopsticks as a material and experiment with alternative methods to create murals, so instead of painting on the wall, I decided to set it ablaze,” Red wrote in her post.

“15,000 bamboo chopsticks were glued, torched, then layered again and burnt a few more times to create depth and dimension to the piece.”

The video of her creation has so far received over 1.9 million views, more than 33,000 reactions, almost 20,000 shares and more than a thousand comments.

The finished mural depicts the Merlion, a mythological half-lion, half-fish icon in Singapore, which is “seen smiling as it is looking forward to the future with enthusiasm and hope,” she wrote in her post.

A graduate of the University of Melbourne with a master’s in architecture, Red previously worked in Shanghai for an Australian architecture firm. She later quit her job in 2013 to become a full-time artist after she was encouraged by her boss to pursue her passion.

Since then, she has created unconventional works of art that include a portrait of singer Adele made up of around 1,500 melted tealight candles and one of actor Jackie Chan made up of 64,000 chopsticks.

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