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After Failing To Design For the Living , He Becomes a Designer For the Dead
Graduating from an art school in Hong Kong in 1998, Ping Chi Au Yeung found no design job in a depressed job market which was impacted by financial crisis. He then decided to work as a helper at his father’s store to do the paper craft, a traditional craft mainly used to be burned as offerings at funerals and annul days of remembrance.
“After failing to be a designer in the living world, I became an designer for the underworld,” he said. “An ‘Underworld designer’ is also a type of designer, though I create designs for the dead.”
Working as a paper craft maker for 20 years and now the owner of the paper craft store, Au Yeung has drawn media attention constantly because of his fashionable and vivid paper craft, including the imitations of computer, guitar, and hamburger.
However, given its association with funeral rites, people today still regard paper craft as something ominous and intentionally avoid it in daily life. “I hope that one day people will not relate paper craft to dead people only, but treat it as a form of art,” Au Yeung said.
