RED HONG-YI: TIME MAGAZINE COVER ON CLIMATE CHANGE

CONGRATULATIONS to Red Hong Yi, whose artwork on climate change was featured on the cover of the latest Time Magazine issue entitled “Climate is Everything: How the Pandemic Can Lead Us to Better Greener World by Justin Worland.”

For the cover, the Sabahan artist created a World map covered by 50,000 green-tipped matchsticks - symbolizing trees, which were set alight to highlight how climate change can affect and destroy the world.

“The pandemic has shown us what it is like to go through a dangerous emergency. That could happen if climate change, accelerates. We destroyed us. But it is also us, who can restore it.”— said Red Hong-Yi, the recipient of The BrandLaureate Brand ICON Leadership Award.

The Malaysian Contemporary Artist received The BrandLaureate Award for the Expression of Iconic Masterpieces of Art Through Material Objects, during the launch of Star Residences at Jalan Yap Kwan Seng in August 2020.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Recounting her experience in creating the artwork measuring 2.3m x 3m, Hong-Yi said: “The world suddenly grew really small, and kind of in our hands.  And when we burnt it down, the flames just grew. And it was scary the entire time, hoping that it wouldn't burn everything down, and it happened really quickly.

“So, I guess the analogy is that the earth was made over millions of years, but we could really just destroy it just like that, in a really short time. It was interesting to see how some far-off places were not destroyed. So that could be a metaphor as well – that the places humans have not gone into suffered less impact.”

In a behind-the-scenes video posted on Hong-Yi’s Instagram page, she assembled a six-member team for the project and spent about two weeks sticking matchsticks non-stop for eight hours a day, and then watched as the whole piece burned down in two minutes.

GLOBAL CRISIS

She wrote in her Instagram post: “As the Covid pandemic continues to assail the world, we are reminded more than ever, that no country is unaffected by Global Crisis, whether it is a pandemic or economic collapse or, as this special issue highlights -- Global Warming and Climate Change.”

The World has gone through a pandemic, and we've all worked together to face that crisis and emergency. We should be applying that same energy and the same spirit in tackling climate change, because that could be even more… of a global crisis that we should all be tackling together.”