After Doge banknote NFT, artist Red Hong Yi unveils 5 artworks for Memebank series

Malaysian artist Red Hong Yi has added five new exclusive artworks to her NFT Memebank Banknotes series which can be purchased in OpenSea. Inspired by world currencies and the contemporary meme culture in the digital world, Yi's Banknotes series are a spoof on dollar bills with the latest redesigns covering Malaysian Ringgit, Singapore Dollar, China Yuan, Japanese Yen, United States Dollar, and British Pound. 

Created to merge the physical and digital worlds, this project aims to critique the current financial systems, said Red Hong Yi. Though each artwork will be sold in the form of NFTs, Yi said the Memebank NFTs come along with physical artworks as well. "As this project was inspired by the concept of NFTs showing proof of ownership, successful bidders for the Memebank NFT will own a physical copper plate and 1/1 canvas print of the artwork," Yi explained. 

The first artwork from the Memebank Banknotes series was launched earlier in June. Titled, "Doge to the Moon", the NFT is based on the Chinese Yuan, featuring the dogecoin. According to Memebank, the artwork was sold on the Binance NFTs on 11 July 2021. Additionally, Yi is also planning for a Memebank Exhibition in 2022. A+M has reached out to Yi for additional information regarding her latest NFTs series. 

Known as "the artist who paints without a paintbrush", Yi designed a series of stamps in September this year which featured a special printing technique that uses red invisible ink, revealing the images of the COVID-19 virus when viewed under a UV light. This was done in partnership with postal delivery service POS Malaysia, paying tribute to the country's frontliners after the COVID-19 outbreak.

Also in Malaysia, singer Namewee has created and released his own NFTs. According to the artist in his latest YouTube video, "Using NFTs to Fight the World", the idea of opening an NFT account was "to counter the intermediaries" and secure ownerships of items such as art. What stood out to Namewee in NFT, was how the content was safe from censorship, where no authority, including himself, had any right to the content sold once someone owns it. 

In conjunction with the theme of using NFT as a stand against the world order, the artist took 20 pictures of him making rude gestures at banking cooperations and commercial enterprises. These pictures were then uploaded on his NFT channel and were sold out within three hours.

Earlier this month, Pixlr launched Pixlr Genesis, a NFT-based movement to build the world’s largest decentralised art museum on the metaverse. The move is to build a 100% decentralised art museum on the metaverse to rival the Louvre, MOMA and National Gallery. Pixlr Genesis aims to empower creators and art owners to display 10,000 pieces of NFTs to the entire world in a crowdsourced museum.

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