We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Qianwen Yu a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Qianwen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The current project I am working on right now might be the most meaningful project I’ve worked on. The working title is ‘Loom and Music’. It explores the woven fabric as a music score; linking it through time, labor and sound to space. The music is created entirely by the structure of woven fabric. The structure includes different numbers of harnesses, tie-ups and orders to hit the treadle. To create different patterns of the fabric, a weaver must need to set up the warp for the loom, design the tie-up box, and confirm the order that their feet hit the treadle. And this form of structure can be written in numbers, translated into a musical score, and then “weaved” into a piece of music. A woven fabric can be a new way to create new music ideas.

​This project started three years ago, as I spent more time in the weaving studio, I noticed that in order for a weaver to create a piece of fabric on the floor loom, they need to step on the treadle with their feet, and also shuttle back and forth with their hands. The process is very similar to create music with a piano. This led me to start thinking about the transition between weaving and music.

The intention of this project is about to explore the relationship of sound and weaving, virtual/abstract and physical, technology and tradition, new and old. It is about how fabric provides a new way to manipulate sound and how to expand our listening ability. It developed a new composition technique and open a doorway for listening to the wider community.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Hello everyone, this is Qianwen, I am a interdisciplinary artist and animation freelancer, and I graduated from School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s MFA program in 2020. In multimedia arts, I work on weaving, sound, and installation. In animation, I work with 2d hand drawn animation, puppet animation, stop motion animation.

Combining traditional techniques, such as weaving and hand-drawing with modern ones, I take experiments from 20th century Modernism in animation, weaving, sound, and architecture and reimagines them in the contemporary moving-image arena. My artwork combines different human sensory dimensions, such as touch, vision, and acoustics, and tries to blur the boundaries between different fields of weaving art, animation, film, sound, and space.

My works have been exhibited and screened in Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, CICA Museum in South Korea, AniFilm Festival Liberec in Czech Republic, Anibar International Animation Festival in Kosovo, Supertoon International Animation and Comics Festival in Croatia etc. My clients include the Sony Music, Adult Swim, the Art Institute of Chicago, NPR, Warner Chappell Production Music, Armada Music, Ports1961, Carpark records, Conner Prairie Museum etc.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Even though I went to a Film/animation program but I didn’t make animated short films like most animation students, I spent most of my time in school doing weaving art which I also love.

But becoming an animation freelancer after I graduated gave me a second chance to get to know and learn more about animation, and to fall in love with it again. After I graduated, I got to know animation better through the commissioned works and felt more confident and comfortable with it. We all know that it is extremely difficult to survive by doing only fine art, but animation is kind of in-between fine art and design, you can find commissions through advertising, music videos, film/television, and other industries.

The first one and a half years after graduation was the most stressful and difficult time. The year of graduation happened to be when the Covid-19 outbreak started, and everything seemed very hopeless. I submitted tons of job applications and barely got any responses around that time, and as a foreigner I also had to prepare my visa application through an attorney at the same time.

I basically just took all the work I could as long as it had a budget, even though I was not that interested, but due to the situation at the time I had no choice but to continue.

I have been running my own social account since I graduated, uploading new work, and constantly building up my own portfolio. Gradually, people came to me for work through Instagram and email, also on freelance websites like Fiverr.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I weave, and I animate. For someone like me who is always changing I really enjoy jumping between these two art worlds, they nourish each other. When I feel tired in animation I jump into the textile world, drawing strength in one world, and then feeling renewed when I return to the other. Sometimes don’t put all your eggs in one basket, so that you won’t have expectations that are too high, and you will focus more on enjoying the process rather than being obsessed with the result.

I started to weave some small stuff in my free time at the beginning of the pandemic, because I couldn’t use the physical looms at school, I was looking for some alternative looms, a ‘loom’ that I could use at home. I ended up cutting a hole in a cereal box and made some little woven earrings and small pattern weavings. Textiles is an art form that has different sensation. They can have different temperature tactile sensations, and can also be combined with vision, touch, and smell. You can even choose to use a light translucent fishing line with cold characteristic, or a conductive line that conducts heat and electricity.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.qianwenyuyu.com
• Instagram: @qianwenyuyu
• Facebook: @qianwenyuyu
• Twitter: @QianwenYuyu

Image Credits
Profile image: Baiqian Zhang Stop motion setup picture (the one has me in it): Elliot Korte