Yuyan Huang
About
Yuyan was born in China and moved to the UK in 2016. She graduated from Kingston University with a BA (Hons) in Illustration Animation, Yuyan is a sincere image-maker who is interested in exploring more possibilities of narrative. Having studied animation, she is interested in the connectivity between different images.
Yuyan’s collaborative projects at Kingston University include a promotional video for the 50th anniversary of the novel 'Slaughter House Five' with Vintage publisher, and an animation for the Royal Opera House. In 2020, she joined Tencent, one of the largest internet companies in China, as a designer intern. She then worked as an independent designer on the Shenzhen Trendy Play Exhibition (2020) before taking up an internship with Qunar, one of the leading travel websites in China. Yuyan is currently involved in pre-concept design for a children's movie.
Statement
It is a state of chaos that is the normal state for us, rather than a conflict of strong opposites. And how do we deal with this chaos from the outside and the inside? How do we find ourselves in this chaos? Where does this chaos come from? Is it something related to our culture, our family background or our education?
The focus of my research has been around one word 'conflict'. But as I explored this theme, I discovered that the world and people 'conflict' all the time. Because binary oppositions are so deeply ingrained in us, when we are children watching animation we ask, ‘Is this person a good guy or a bad guy?’. In Chinese, the word ‘conflict’ is made up of ‘spear’ and ‘shield’. It is the presence of these two things which makes up conflict. When describing a person, we often say that the person is ‘very conflicted’, meaning that there is a spear and shield in their body. And I was thinking that maybe there is a very sharp side and a very solid side within each person, and these two sides of the person will create a war within themselves. And sometimes the spear wins, and sometimes the shield wins. And the result of the victory shows what kind of person you are. But as time passed, I became more aware that the world is neither black or white, and that a person can be neither a good nor a bad person. But strangely enough, these confusions are constructed in a particular way into a seemingly solid outer self. In my practice, I wanted to peel myself back, layer by layer, to find out why all this was happening.
They:Mental Space
This project is a narrative of a monologue about the inner state of a person when internal conflict happens. I feel that when conflict happens within me, there are often many different voices in my head that are arguing, and these voices make up the conflict within me.
In the first part of the project, I built a mental space which is a spinning machine. I found that when I was in a conflict situation, I would create a high wall for myself to protect my inner vulnerability. When I started to think, different voices would come out of their own space and start to speak to me. They appear and disappear, and the faster my mind thinks, the more often these voices appear. On the other hand, this internal activity also simulates a situation in which I am constantly walking in place when I am confronted with conflict, only able to turn in place and not find an exit.
Medium: Acrylic model, video
Size: 73cm×50cm×50cm
They:Story
The second part of this work draws from the mental space that I have constructed. This section is meant to describe in more detail how these inner conflicts occur and how they communicate within this space. To show this abstract process of mental activity in a more figurative way.
Medium: Digital drawings
Distance Nearness
To explore the materialisation of virtual space this work creates layered images based on collected posts on a chat app and social media. We have a space of our own on social media, we can dress up our space as much as we want, and then each day we post is like adding layer after layer, and filter after filter to ourselves. But on the other hand, we are also trapped in our creation because it is hard to reach real people in this remote social situation, and the layers of postings actually create a detachment from reality. We want to get to know someone through this virtual space, but in reality it often becomes hazy and it is harder to see the person behind the layers of decoration and filters.
Medium: Acrylic model, Digital drawing
Size: 12cm×12cm×12cm