YEYE by MunkyKing X YARMS Design Studio
"The recent rise in violent racially motivated attacks against Asian Americans is made more heinous by the fact that many of the victims are elderly. Children of Asian immigrants remember helping their parents and grandparents study for their naturalization test—a test that didn’t prepare them for the fact that they will never be seen as fully American. Now these elders are being slammed to the sidewalks, beaten in subways, and brutally murdered day after day. Asian Americans deserve to be treated as any other citizens of The United States, not targets of hatred, vitriol, and violence. The time for silence is over.". (@munkykingtoys)
MunkyKing introduces us to the "YEYE" figure, made in collaboration with @danil_yad's YARMS design studio (IG @yarms.studio), with the specific likeness of this figure being the grandfather of the company’s founder.
"My Yeye lived peacefully in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district amidst the chaos of the roughest neighborhood in the city. Were he alive today, would he still be treated as a human being? Because the inhumanity visited on these recent victims makes obvious the fact that we continue to be seen as something other." ~ shared Patrick Lam, President of Munky King.
The "target on his back" is as haunting as the aesthetics of the figure charms and evoke a familial nostalgia, and quite frankly a very real fear of the future - not least our loved ones growing old, but of the grave situation happening right now as we go about our lives, IMHO. As "foreign" the #StopAAPIHate notion might be to us folks here in South East Asia, it is a real and clear danger, where hate fuels ignorance.
"YEYE" is the second installment of the "Truth to Power" line of designer toys. Munky King had previously released the Colin Kaepernick-inspired "THE MESSENGER" designed by KaNO.
