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

Yixuan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

It all started with my grandfather, an engineer and talented self-taught artist. As a little girl, I was always amazed by the quick yet lovely sketches he did in the corner of his notebooks. Inspired by the pure beauty of his artworks, I started my drawings next to his. Occasionally, he would ask art-related questions such as “You are such a thoughtful little artist! I like that face you created for your little mermaid… What is she thinking about? Is she crying over her lover or missing her home in the deep sea? Why don’t you add some background for her?” All my earliest artistic dreams were born from these simple practices, questions, and conversations. He built wings of imagination for me by using his own. Ever since then, I know that I wish to become an artist and illustrator in the future.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Yixuan Wu. I am a Chinese-born illustrator and artist based in New York City. I was graduated from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2020 and currently pursuing a master’s degree at Fashion Institute of Technology. My art style is highly inspired by the historical legacies of decorative arts in Asia and the Western world. Influenced by these luxurious and elegant pieces, many of my illustrations are highly detailed and full of patterns, yet due to my interest in Pop Art, I can also go flat, simple, and graphic. My artistic purpose is to create images that invoke a mysterious past from a modern perspective and female gaze and to bring the audience into worlds full of dusky, romantic, and antique visions.
I’m currently working on a project about “Women’s Script”, a Chinese syllabic script used exclusively among women. As an illustrator, I believe it’s my duty to record the stories of those less well-known figures in history in an artistic and humanistic way.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I believe it’s very important for the public to respect artists’ and creatives’ copyrights, especially on social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. Currently, there are still many artists and illustrators’ works being reposted without permission by other online accounts, some of these reposters would even attribute the original credit of these artworks to themselves to gain profits. This kind of behavior is disrespectful to the creativity community. In addition to the necessary use of watermarks, perhaps this situation can be solved by increasing the general public’s copyright awareness. Also, if society can increase its acknowledgment of the value and practicality of creative works and no longer regard being an artist as an ‘unusual job’, artists and creatives in our community will undoubtedly feel more supported. As Oscar Wilde said, “All art is quite useless”, but art can be the source of plentiful derivative merchandise, indirect abstract inspirations, or prototype for future inventions. The value that artistic creations can produce is so much more than we think.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

One of my all-time goals is to remove the outdated part of classical art, and then combine it with my female identity, hence I’d be able to create illustrations that have both modern feminist value and classical beauty. The views conveyed by pre-modern artistic works are often contrary to feminism, such as the “More sons, more blessings” meaning behind China’s traditional pomegranate patterns, as well as the Damsel In Distress paintings commonly seen in European countries; one illustration I created was based on the latter, by reconstructing and subverting the theme, I turned the damsel from a helpless victim into a rebel fighting against the patriarchy. This very series of illustrations also includes two works I did inspired by the story of Chinese goddess Nuwa, one is about “How she created a woman from clay based on her own image”, and the other is about “One modern woman found traces of clay on her skin when looking into the mirror.”
In addition to illustration works inspired by myths and folklore, I also create works based on my own experiences, plenty of them are focused on the mental connection between a female protagonist and another woman in her life. Take my short comic Forever Beloved as an example, it’s the story of my grandmother, I describe how painful her death is to me, our close relationship in the past, and the impact of this hard journey on my life. I hope to use this type of illustration to express my understanding of feminism, and will definitely continue to create more artworks like these in the future.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://artbyyixuan.myportfolio.com/
• Instagram: _yixuan.wu_
• Other: Email: [email protected]