NEW YORK, NEW YORK.- The California-based record label 88Rising, which focuses on promoting Asian music in the United States, held its annual Head in the Clouds Music Festival in New York from May 20 to May 21. Many international music artists, including Rich Brian, ITZY, NIKI, and MaSiwei, made appearances. To promote the concert to a larger audience and to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, which is held every May in the United States, McDonald's, a sponsor of 88Rising, extended an invitation to the well-known illustrator Zilong Su, who currently resides in Atlanta, for a collaborative mural project themed around the celebration of Asian Heritage Month.

Zilong Su, originally from Changsha, Hunan, now resides in Atlanta, USA, and is a renowned artist skilled in pop art illustrations and graphic design. He's a multi-disciplinary artist who blends street art, and has a background of collaborations with globally recognized brands such as Tesla and Lexus. Apart from his extensive advertising creative experience, Su is a winner of numerous major illustration awards, including the American Illustrations 42 Winner, Applied Arts Photography & Illustration Awards Winner, a gold medal in the Society of Illustrators 65th Annual Competition, and the winner in the advertising sector of Creative Quarterly 69. Su's creative methods range from digital drawing to traditional painting, specializing in brand illustration, poster design, acrylic painting, handbook production, street wear design, and additional animation production. His work, filled with childlike charm yet embedded with deep reflections on the state of the world, has received positive reviews from audiences of all ages. From 2019 to 2023, his works have been invited for exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Atlanta, Indiana, South Carolina, Guangdong, as well as various online exhibitions.

For this event, McDonald's proactively contacted Zilong Su and diligently followed up over an intense two-week period, creating a McDonald's pop-up exhibit booth that mimicked the features of a New York subway station. This provided concert attendees with a mural for check-in, immersive design, a mirror to express their thoughts as Asians, and special edition McDonald's New York subway cards, all of which added more joy and atmosphere to the HITC music festival.

The mural "APAHM Rhapsody," created by Zilong Su for this occasion, incorporates a variety of structures unique to Asian communities across America, including Chinatown in Philadelphia, Little Saigon in Texas, Indonesian characteristic red and white balloons, Little India in California, Thai Square, the Japanese Tower in San Francisco, and a Filipino food truck. These diverse elements, scattered from the East to the West of the US, comprise the Asian American community living in the country. They resonate with 88Rising's ongoing promotion of Asian music culture, and at the same time, celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. By creating an immersive and dreamlike experience for the event attendees, Su's work not only promotes the event itself but also highlights and emphasizes the diversity and importance of the Asian community in America. This dynamic integration of culture and art underscores the fact that the richness and complexity of the Asian diaspora is not just an integral part of American society, but a significant contributor to its multicultural identity.



"Attendees at the event received special edition New York subway cards from McDonald's."