I did this illustration for my exchange course project on creating something that represents yourself. I want to discuss this topic by introducing my family's Chinese New Year reunion dinner because food is the best choice for me to take a look at my culture also represent me as well.

I mainly focused on eight dishes I may cook for my parents in our traditional festival, which comes from my hometown, the city where I'm living, and my boyfriend's kitchen.

I connect those dishes with people who not only build a relationship with me by teaching me their recipes but also affect me profoundly. The food I cooked is a unique way of expressing my love to them. Meanwhile, it also reflects who I am, with my unique memory, experience, and self- identification.

It’s been a while for me to stay home in Shanghai due to the pandemic and unfortunately, none of us know when it will pass. So I start a personal project named FULLNESS to record how to make myself feel satisfied and full physically and psychologically during this time, as well as trying a full composition on the canvas.

A cover story campaign of The New York Times named Love City recorded different lovers in the street, sharing their love stories via scene. This event inspired me to create an illustration of various hugging couples with the shape of a heart.

From my point of view, we can express our love freely and presently because we are imperfect and complicated young guys, but associate together with miraculous love.

printed by RISOGRAPH

The open-binding format invites readers to join in the re-creation and sharing of the work and is a sustainable way of experimenting.

Read Mudan's poem 'Spring' to commemorate the passing of April in Shanghai, pick up a pen and fill in your creative phrases about hugs, or unwrap a folded piece and use it as a poster or gift wrap for someone else. Reading, re-creating, and sharing also respond to the associative memories I have formed in thinking about the theme of hugs.

Process and materials

Inside: 80g Dowling paper, digital print

Cover: celluloid sheet, embossed and hand-screen printed

Binding: silver ribbon

Size: 210mmx148.5mm

This set of illustrations is one of my coursework during the undergraduate period. I tried to use illustrations as my language to express my review of a movie named Memoirs of a Geisha. The story is similar to Cinderella but with different meanings, like the pursuit of beauty or contend for their fate.

I chose red and blue as the main color to mirror the conflict between reality and fantasy in the movie. In addition, l also hope that viewers could add their image into my illustrations to engage the reflection，so l tried to simplify the character’s face.

This series of illustrations is about my concern towards the influence of collecting and analyzing data for a better quality of life.

It's been a month since my home quarantine and every weekend I've been painting something flexible to release my emotions and stress.

I try to think of the process as an art residency, hoping to wander aimlessly across the paper with my brush to paint moments that calm me.

Growing up in a small immigrant industrial town in Northwest China without dialect，my experience of studying in Shanghai and the UK made me pay attention to the identity attributes of "food" and "dialect." It launched a series of personal explorations on related topics. From the perspective of the language of food and Shanghai culture, the series of works of "Food Words of Shanghainese" discusses the relationship between current popular culture, food, dialect, and identity with the entry point of food puns in Shanghai dialect.

Swatch Art Peace Hotel artist residency projects

Inspired by the Love City series of cover stories for The New York Times, I embarked on this series when studied in the UK. I am using the illustration language to document the appearance of different lovers and the use of positive and negative shapes to punctuate the possibilities of love. The work extends visually as a tightly woven network and reflects my thoughts on relationships themselves.

After experiencing the pandemic, I wanted to focus on different individuals and environments, from other regions, with varying colors of skin, different orientations, and even across species, all connected by a common, or what could be interpreted as a 'love' force.

The series has been exhibited in various art spaces in the US and China and has been nominated for CA Illustration Award and ADC Silver Cube.

printed by RISOGRAPH