MASALANIGHT TERRORS
“I hallucinate and
sometimes see a lot of
very frightening visions.”
Photos by Mimi Choi.
TEXT BY RUBY ROSENWASSERJust Add
Magic
Preschool teacher turned illusion makeup artist,
Mimi Choi took a deep dive into the beauty section
and found an unexpected path toward healing.As the clock strikes 3 a.m., a four-eyed woman with a spliced face,
f lawless brows and faux lashes is painting away in the mirror while the
city sleeps. Mimi Choi is a makeup artist, who uses her own face as a can-
vas for her mind-boggling illusion looks. With painstaking precision,
her skin can take on the qualities of shattered glass, sunken holes and
dripping paint, or even disappear behind an unraveling ribbon.
There’s no team, fancy equipment or Photoshop involved in Choi’s art.
She prefers to work from home and captures her process with an iPhone
X. Based in Vancouver, Canada, she’s the pioneering makeup artist
behind the optical-illusion trend, a style characterized by manipulating
light and shadow to bring ever y thing from multiple facial features and
grotesque attributes to fantasy themes, macabre elements and inan-
imate objects to life on the human face. For this year’s Met Gala, Choi
lent her talents to Ezra Miller’s show-stopping seven-eyed look. But
you’ve probably seen her work on Instagram before she made her debut
on the world stage. She’s garnered the attention of over one million IG
followers and has even collaborated with brands such as M AC, Mehron
Makeup, UNICEF and Make Up For Ever.
Though Choi has been drawing and doodling since she was a child,
she never thought she would get into makeup. She grew up in Macau in
a competitive school environment before her parents immigrated to
Canada. “I think a lot of Asian kids might feel the same way,” she says. “I
focused mainly on science and math. My parents knew that I was inter-
ested in art, but it was not something that I took seriously.”
Five years ago, Choi worked as a preschool teacher and occasionally
did her friends’ bridal and graduation makeup. Feeling directionless
and depressed in her 20s, she decided to attend makeup school, where
she experimented beyond traditional beauty looks. Her first big break
was with N Y X Professional Makeup, which featured her on its platforms
during her second year of doing illusion makeup. “I remember I was in
the kitchen, scrubbing the sink, and I saw my phone f lashing. I was like,
‘What’s going on?’” Choi says. “I turn on my phone, and I went from
5,000 followers to 15,000 in one night.”
Choi cites painters Salvador Dalí and M.C. Escher as sources of inspi-
ration, but also draws from another unexpected source: sleep paralysis.
It’s a condition that she describes as “when my awakened self is trapped
inside of my sleeping body.” “I hallucinate and sometimes see a lot of
ver y frightening visions,” Choi says. “I realized that, when I draw them
out [through my makeup], I don’t think about them anymore. Makeup
heals me and helps release my fears.”
She often takes her paralyzing visions and paints them directly on her
face. Her creative process is simple: she never plans any thing out (with
the exception of Miller’s Met Gala look, which she planned at 4 a.m. the
day of ). Though the opportunity to showcase her work on the interna-
tional stage could be considered a major feather in any makeup artist’s
cap, Choi never wants to feel complacent in her journey. “I want to cre-
ate new art all the time, and I don’t ever want to stop,” Choi says. “I don’t
want to ever feel like, ‘Oh, I’m done now.’ It’s never enough. Ever y day I
feel like I’m happier than yesterday just because I get to do something
that I’m passionate about. Ever yone is capable of that. It’s just we’re
sometimes scared.” CM