ABU DHABI ART FAIR 2023

Mak2’s artworks are bound by a dualism of humour and inquisitiveness. Home Sweet Home are triptychs on canvas that the artist composes using the popular life simulation game ‘The Sims’ and fabricates via painters hired from the Chinese e-commerce platform, Taobao.

Alluding to the increasing use of the virtual world as the contemporary way of escapism, the artist constructs bizarre and fantastical environments within “The Sims” that often defy the restrictions of reality, be it social, economic or even physical. In order to materialise the artwork, she then takes a screenshot of the virtual environment, divides the imagery into three parts, and sends each part to a different painter found on Taobao. The painters replicate the received images via paint and brush, unaware that they are each painting but a third of a full composition. Owing to the craftsmen’s different use of palette and techniques, the final triptychs inevitably contain misalignments and color differences between each panel. The disparity between Mak2’s original imagery and the resultant paintings not only elucidate the invariable discrepancy between reality and fantasy, but also crafts a comment on authorship, copy-cat culture, and the layered narratives of home.