Female artist uses stickers to show pop culture

Ye Hongxing [Photo provided to China Daily]

Advertisements, logos, patterns and words of slogans－all elements of daily life across the world－appear on her canvas through stickers.

She regularly goes to a wholesale market in Beijing that sells stickers and updates her works frequently. She says she notices how stickers stay topical in pop culture.

"If you want to know what's popular in the world, just go visit a sticker shop," says the 45-year-old artist.

Sometimes, she says she doesn't even have an idea of the images on the stickers she uses. But she finds the answer from the sellers or collectors of such items.

"It's easy for a viewer to connect with her works, regardless of background or nationality," says Zhang Lexing, a gallerist and collector of Ye's works.

"From a distance they look like beautiful pictures with vivid images or abstract patterns. A closer look will show motifs from daily life."

Ye says her works focus on the subject of fullness to show the world rich in goods. People are bombarded with information and commodities but they don't know what they really want.

Besides, the artist's works reflect opposing entities: exciting and mundane, hard and soft.