Jiali Wu is an illustrator and visual artist who was born and raised in China. In 2019 she completed a BFA in Illustration in China Academy of Art and she is currently studying MA Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art. Her previous work mostly takes the form of children’s picture books and graphic novels. Currently, she is committed to exploring experimental narrative language in physical publications. Her methods include drawing and collage, for example pastel and digital media, which she chooses for their ability to express subjective emotions and create ambiguous contexts.
Jiali Wu
‘Identity’ and ‘memory’ have been the main keywords of my works in recent years.
In this fluid society, the boundaries of public space tend to be blurred, which can cause anxiety about our identity. How do we maintain the continuity of identity and the identity of selfhood? We often rely on memory to find our identity. However, as a subjective activity of consciousness, memory is, of course, influenced to a certain extent. In that way, is memory really reliable? Should we question the reliability of our identity when it is constructed by memory? What is the relationship between memory and identity? Can identity thus generated really serve as a definition of ourselves?
Based on this context, my practice discussed these issues through interviews with five ordinary people. I interpreted the concept of identity mentioned by the five interviewees with visual languages, and at the same time studied the dynamic relationship between the memory fragments they provided and their construction of identity. This project aims to explore how to construct identity in such a postmodern context and interrogate the rationality of relying on memory to construct identity.
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Memory, as a subjective activity of consciousness, cannot escape the fate of being interfered with by the subject of memory and other factors.
This series of collages is my narrative description of memory in this publication. After gathering the description of fragmented memories recalled by the interviewees, I constructed dynamic narratives in static pictures. It aims to present ambiguous narratives, reflecting the changes in memory over time and interference of self-definition.
Medium:
Mixed media collageSize:
19.8cm×26.8cm
Volume 01 - pages 13-14
Volume 05 - pages 15-16
Volume 04 - pages 13-14
Volume 05 - pages 13-14
Nothing is forever is a publication which responds to the issues around the dynamic relationship between memory and identity. It consists of a folded poster and 5 zines corresponding to 5 interviews, respectively. Due to the limitations of the interview, this publication uses symbolic narrative language, which explores and questions the rationality of a particular identity being emphasized or weakened under the influence of memory. Please follow the reading guide on the poster to start your visual journey.