We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Yang Zhou. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Yang below.

Yang , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

I think the most meaningful project I have ever done is: Tarot Cards. With the coronavirus epidemic, many people, including me, experienced a prolonged quarantine from the epidemic. There were many people who became cranky, restless and lost during the time they lost the freedom to travel. But I saw the quarantine as a time to have more opportunities to get to know my inner self and go deeper into myself. During this time, I actively isolated myself from the Internet and recalled a pastime I was fascinated with as a teenager: tarot cards. Many people lost their jobs during the epidemic, and their mental stress grew as a result of the epidemic and the tense social climate. The uncertainty caused by the epidemic spread through people’s minds, which led to confusion and expectations for the future struggling in people’s minds, as it did for me. After I unfolded the tarot cards with mystery and beautiful images again, I thought back to my last reading which also took place at a time when I was experiencing unease and confusion. Tarot cards have many mystical rumors, such as foretelling future blessings and calamities that may appear in life, but they also have the effect of relieving stress in the mind. The presence of Tarot cards provides me with some solace by showing me a picture of opportunity and spiritual card combinations from time to time, which allows me to immerse myself in the pleasure of reading these symbolic elements. This pleasure helps me resist the boredom and tedium of isolation. And as an artist and illustrator, I realized that quarantine was also a great opportunity to create art, so I chose to create some Tarot cards at home with a personal touch.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I consider books in cultural anthropology to be an inspirational resource that I wish I could have known about earlier in my life. The first work of cultural anthropology I read was by the Englishman James Fraser, whose work, The Golden Bough, offers a very rich study of religion and beliefs. These texts, which focused on collecting and studying human beliefs and the religious practices (witchcraft, magic, rituals, ceremonies, festivals, etc.) that practice these beliefs around the world, then became a spiritual feast for me and enlightened my initial understanding of such cultures. Therefore, I consider cultural anthropology to be a great source of inspiration.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Over a period of time, I have created editorial illustrations based on brain science, fashion illustrations inspired by haute couture and book illustrations based on the legends of Chinese minority tribes in northeastern China. I am a personal practitioner of mindfulness meditation, and nowadays, more and more scientific studies show that meditation practices can promote short-term memory, relieve anxiety, depression and inflammation, and improve the brain’s cognitive abilities, and I personally derive benefits and creative inspiration from such mental exercises. However, a person who loves mythology and magic can also be a person who follows the runways and fashion weeks. The miniature dresses made by Dior for product previews are a fascinating point for me, a tradition invented by Mr. Dior and kept in Dior fashion house. I don’t know how to embroider and use stitches, but my artistic creativity, tablet and apple pencil can help me to create my own miniature dresses. I imagined an exhibition of miniature dresses, designed the exhibits the posters for this it, which could be considered a dream come true.

The last project I would like to describe, which I think reflects my flexibility in the subject matter with the first two projects, is an illustration project based on the myths and legends of the ethnic minorities of northeastern China. To create this book illustration, I read two academic publicationson on shamanic culture. One is named as biography of a shaman from Nishan, collected and edited by Chinese writers Gou Changchun, Jing Wenli and Fuguang, and the other is Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy by Mircea Eliade, the former providing the entire story and the latter providing detailed references and research on shamanic costumes. Both books have each contributed useful information in my shamanic illustrations.

Contact Info:

• Website: None
• Instagram: sunmoonstarwitch
• Facebook: None
• Linkedin: None
• Twitter: None
• Youtube: None
• Yelp: None
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/sunmoonstarwitch/

Image Credits
Fashion illustration reference: Alexander Mc Queen