Raven Luk (Yiwen Lu) is a London-based visual artist from Shanghai, China. Her practice across graphic design, digital imagery, video art, and installation. She is committed to the fusion of physical and digital art. Her work lies between abstraction and reality, based on the smallest details of life, documents and creates experimental images and videos through her own life while exploring different cultures.
Raven Luk
I am more of an observer than a creator.
All my inspiration comes from my real life, I capture everything interesting through my lens and then translate it into visual language. Maintaining curiosity and love for life is central to my creativity.
My practice spans many disciplines which is often critical and revealing of politics and social culture. I was passionate about exploring Shanghai’s society and culture when I resided there. I specialize in engaging audiences through storytelling.
Now I have London as a base which allows me to travel in this part of the world over the past year and document many images of architecture or natural spaces. I started to experiment with new creative directions.
By studying the connections between nature, cities, and people through water, I have gradually shifted my way of looking at things from figurative to abstract, extroverted to introverted.
Spring Water - Iceland
Water Ripple - London
Glacier - Iceland
Beach Water - Lisbon
Stream - Iceland
Groundwater - Budva
Reflections of Water - Venice
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Be Water is a video installation that consists of a video monitor and a container with ice. The inspiration comes from my archive about water.
Over the past year, I have been traveling in Europe. I have recorded these images of water in Iceland, Switzerland, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands, and many other countries. At first, they were simply photographed unconsciously by me. Slowly, as I took more and more images, I became fascinated by the characteristics of water.
Lao Tzu says: “The highest goodness is like water, water benefits all things without competing.” Water is everywhere and humans cannot live without it, but water embraces everything.
In this video, I show the movement, flow, shape, and sound of different kinds of water in different environments from my first-hand perspective. Water flows through all places, whether in nature or in cities. It turns into clouds, rain, oceans, rivers, glaciers, and waterfalls. It becomes oil, fountains, and tap water. But at the end of the day, it is still water. Just as ice in a container slowly melts over time and becomes a pool of water. You never know where this water comes from, but you will be captivated by its purity.
Be Water is the ultimate destination for all of us. No matter what you have experienced in life, no matter what you have become. You are nothing more than a body of water.