A creative Asian artist recently presented a stunning mural made of 20,000 tea bags.
Hong Yi, from Malaysia, also known as Red, never ceases to amaze her fans with her works created by unusual materials. This time she chose tea bags and used them instead of paint to create a mural called ‘Teh Tarik Man’.
According to oddstuffmagazine website, the Malaysian artist in her work often uses motifs that reflect the culture of the country. She was commissioned to work on a piece about Malaysia to be showcased at the World Economic Forum on Jan 24, and decided to base the artwork on an everyday scene that reminded her of home. The painting depicts a man who makes tea.
‘Teh Tarik’ (literally ‘pulled-tea’ in Malay) is a drink served in local cafes that is sweet, frothy and milky, and is frothed up when tea is poured between two containers,” said Hong in a statement.
“It is a drink that brings people together and I hope that I am able to share a bit of my country’s culture through this piece,” she said.
To create a picture height of 3.2 meters and weighing nearly 200 pounds the artist took more than 2 months. Hong used 20,000 teabags to illustrate a man preparing ‘teh tarik’ in the background, with soft drink cans and an ice-shaving machine as props in the foreground.
Different Shades
The teabags were stained in 10 different shades of brown by steeping the bags in hot water, while darker tones were obtained by coloring them with brown food dye.
All the bags were then meticulously stapled together and attached onto tiles of wire mesh, then hung from a wooden frame. She spent about two months planning, sourcing, creating and filming this piece.
Hong is known for her YouTube videos of her creating beautiful art pieces using everyday materials like basketballs, chopsticks, food items, feathers, sticks, socks, coffee, melted candles, sunflower seeds, makeup, books, tea bag tabs, flower blossoms, fingernail polish and super-hydrophobic chemical on astro-turf with white paint, tea bags and many more things.
Her breakthrough project came in Jan 2012 when she used a basketball dipped in red paint to create a portrait of former Chinese NBA superstar Yao Ming.
