Chongkun Yao is a Chinese designer studying in the UK, with a focus on the screen-printing process. His design style incorporates vivid colors, abstract concepts, graphic patterns, and a mix of textiles. The print stories and the bright colors make his designs attractive to the modern youth pursuing an understanding of life and their own style. Using a combination of abstract floral design and multi-layered fabrics, his designs depict a lively image of youth.
Chongkun Yao
Reflection // Dear Audience
Reflection is the way I want to communicate with the audience. I hope that the audience can think of their own experiences when they see through my work.
This project builds on my personal experience about how I perceive stereotypes and freedom. People often say that we need to pursue freedom and be who we are, but I still habitually follow other people's influence on me and overuse others' views of me to achieve self-identification. Therefore, I always pretend that I am free. I hope audiences can think of their own identity by seeing how my work encourages and supports my own identity.
Covering — I am used to keeping silent and an optimistic personal image when I face my family and different social groups. The different hands in the picture represent that my family and social groups have been surrounding me. They have many influences on my thinking and life. I hide my true self.
Visions — I used stereotyped gender colors to paint the image of my parents, and their eyes were focused on me. The different ideas of the two generations diverged, which made me even more uneasy. These circumstances aggravated my doubts about my identity. Let me keep a silent state all the time when facing emotions. These conditions put me in a state of depression, pain and anxiety.
Silence and depression — 'Imagine each breath going out is the pain and the past, being released from your body and mind.'
Don't let colour limited yourself
Out of place — Masculinity
Stereotypes
Tired — The inner strength of many of us is influenced by many social cultures. We have been advocating ourselves and telling ourselves to pursue freedom and a better way of life. But in the end, most of us are very sad pretending that we are free.
Self mind protection — Leave all the effects behind my back.
Emotion and Patten selections — Use the combination of patterns in my paintings to show depressed emotions.
Final outcome
Final film
I call my project ‘Dear Audience’ because I think it’s not just in this project that there are audiences to see my work. In my own life, everyone around me is also my audience. So this project also wants people around me to see the pain in the process of hiding my true self. This is a process of self-encouragement, so I want to use this project to help me find my identity before entering society and help me reduce my stress when I face my family and different social groups.