Leah Yao’s talents in crafting miniatures have taken both bright and bleak forms, with the recent “Mini Memento Mori” representing the latter. More often than not, the artist’s Instagram bio aptly describes her output: “I make clay food.” The RISD student’s above piece impresses in the details that add both humor and intrigue to the work.
““How can the smallest art form convey large ideas?” the artist wrote. “By juxtaposing current issues with classic art themes of mortality and feasts, I hope to encourage the viewer to consider the sometimes-toxic food systems that constitute modern diets, and to think about what we create (ahem, miniature concrete pieces…) will exist on the planet after we are dead and gone.”
See more of Yao’s work below.
Using silicone, wood, resin, actual hair, and marble, Mexican sculptor 
Kara Walker's recent Hyundai Commission is a 45-foot-high fountain at Tate Modern, exploring the historical tether between Africa, America and Europe with inspiration from the Victoria Memorial in London. Water, Tate says, has its own significance in the work, “referring to the transatlantic slave trade and the ambitions, fates and tragedies of people from these three continents.” The title of the work: “Fons Americanus.”
Taking influence from Byzantine art and other eras of religious art, Aleksandar Todorovic renders contemporary tech figures as religious icons and social media symbols as sacred, in egg tempera and acrylic. Elsewhere, his painted and sculpture works look at consumerism and contemporary global politics. He recently displayed this works under the title “Religion Remastered.”