There’s a wicked vein of wit that runs through this 29-year-old’s personal work. One print, for instance, depicts a bisected Bugs Bunny-ish rabbit accompanied by the phrase “split decisions”, while another series nods to the early 2000s with saucy graphics set as the wallpaper of a Nokia 3310, a wildly popular phone model among youths of the era. Everything possesses a vintage flair or – as Hong puts it – “looks like something from a grimy ’90s T-shirt”. And like many of such products of yesteryear, there’s also a good whiff of DIY – they (their preferred pronoun) manipulate clip art and old photos to achieve their desired outcome. Add those trademark sly quips and the resulting work is prime material for today’s irony-loving audience.
Here’s the thing: Before taking on a full-time graphic design job here in 2021, Hong was more a self-taught graphic design hobbyist with a keen interest in the scene. They had majored in architecture in school and were working in the editorial department of an architecture publication in Japan before the pandemic changed everything. “It was only then that I started being serious about graphic design and decided to post my artwork on Instagram, since it’s a free and accessible platform,” they say (their Instagram account: @gracehong.party). “After all, I was jobless, having returned home from a two-year stint at the magazine. It was the perfect storm to get into something cathartic.”
Some might say that Hong has come a considerable way since. Three months ago, they exhibited their artwork – prints and zines featuring their clever, vivid imagery – in public for the first time at the Singapore Art Book Fair, an experience they count as a career high. We think this marks only the start.