By Tomson Cheang
While cockroaches are seen as repulsive bad bugs, Brandon Huang, a recent graduate from Taiwan majoring in art, presented his personal digital painting exhibition featuring cockroaches in what viewers described as adorable. Audience members said although the paintings wouldn’t stop them from killing cockroaches, it was still surprising to see Huang’s cute and imaginative works.
“Cockroaches are so relative to our lives. While most people don’t like cockroaches, I want to look at the world from the perspective of cockroaches,” shared Huang.
The theme of the exhibition was “Invaders.” Huang painted a series of works telling a story of how a group of cockroaches moved from their original home to the human world.
Huang said the diversity in Hawaii inspired him to include different species of cockroaches in his story. The first two paintings depicted how the small cockroaches were discriminated by larger cockroaches. “Maybe it wasn’t their intent to come to our world, but they had to move,” shared Huang.
The journey of the invaders continued throughout each painting. According to Huang’s story, as was explained during his exhibition, when one group of cockroaches arrived in the human world and found out there were other cockroaches which had already been living there, the older residents were delighted to accept them and finally, the cockroaches found their home in the human world.
The audience recognized Huang’s talents and creativity. Sabrina Lin, a junior from Taiwan majoring in piano performance, said Huang’s work allowed her to see cockroaches in a new perspective. “He’s so talented. He presented little things in our lives in such a cute way. Looking at cockroaches now, they don’t seem that disgusting anymore.”
Echo Chen, a senior from China studying hospitality and tourism management, said it’s creative of Huang to look at the world from the perspective of cockroaches. “It’s cool. It’s special. Not a lot of people would paint cockroaches.”
Having witnessed the painting process of one of the works of Huang’s, Chen said she admired how Huang diligently worked on his art. “When he paints, he’s really serious about the angle and the lights. It’s not easy. I don’t know how much time he’s put into those works.”
Hannah Weng, a sophomore from Taiwan studying HTM, said, “It is so vivid that I feel like the cockroaches are coming out from the paintings, and they are so cute.”
Jared Tan, a freshman from Malaysia majoring in computer science, said he liked how Huang used his paintings to present a story. “I envy that. He has the talent to do that while I don’t.”
Despite how adorable the cockroaches are in the paintings, the audience said they would still keep killing cockroaches in real life. Tan said, “Of course, it doesn’t change how I view cockroaches. Some people like them, and some people just don’t. I personally hate cockroaches very much, but I could tell Huang likes them.”
Weng commented, “Cockroaches in reality are still too different from those in the cute paintings. I’ll still want to kill them.”
Huang said he had always wanted to present a series of his art. He said he was grateful for the chance to finally do that and expressed his gratitude for his teachers who had helped him with both his painting skills and how to present the story.
Huang shared how he had always been interested in telling stories in forms of media and art. “Since I was a child, I already wanted to draw comics. I also want to make films or cartoons to tell stories, so this exhibition has fulfilled my dream to a certain degree.”