Mak Ying Tung 2, Home Sweet Home, 2019 (installation shots De Sarthe)
Home Sweet Home (2019-) is a series are triptychs on canvas created by Mak Ying Tung 2 through a fascinating process. First the artist appropriated and modified images from The Sims and then she asked three separate painters on the Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao to paint them. A commentary on the nature of images, outsourcing, the gig economy, authorial control, and digital culture, Home Sweet Home uses the aesthetic of utopia to depict an increasingly dystopian world. Mak 2’s images depict colorful rooms filled with CCTV cameras, millennial hangout spots, and pools on "green roofs" filled with plants. Mak 2 screen grabbed digital fantasies enacted within the world of The Sims and subsequently divided the images into thirds. Each third was then painted by a separate painter found on Taobao, who was given as little instruction as possible. Thus, Mak 2 partially abdicated her authorship and delegated part of the production to a third party whom she did not previously knew. Home Sweet Home illustrates the contradictions of the Generation Z(oom), in which the very idea of domesticity, labor, and art requires a radical rethinking.
Mak Ying Tung 2 was born in Hong Kong in 1989. She graduated from City University of Hong Kong with a Bachelor’s degree in Critical Intermedia Art in 2013. Mak Ying Tung 2 currently lives and works in Hong Kong. Mak 2 is a conceptual artist and her work is not defined by any medium. Her recent works contemplate contemporary issues through the study of Humanities. The aesthetic experience she crafts is bound by the dualism of humor and intense, often dark inquisitiveness.
LINK: Mak Ying Tung 2 (all images (c) of the Artist and De Sarthe)
