I’m a Mum?!

The refrain “Ibu, ibu, engkaulah ratu hatiku” carries a maternal image that feels certain: nurturing, steady, and complete. But what happens when that certainty starts to soften? I’m a Mum?! explores the visceral reality of early motherhood, the quiet labor and the shifting self that exist beneath the familiar refrain. Marking a personal entry from pregnancy through the first thirty days of post-partum confinement, the work was conceived in a time when time stops behaving like time. Red Hong Yi turns to materialities inseparable from this periphery: muslin, thread, needles, and buttons. These soft, familiar objects, usually obscured by the care they facilitate, are used to hold structures together when they threaten to come apart. What remains is a trace of living through the blur, a love that builds quietly through the same small things done again and again.