Lulu Yang

An indistinct illustration with a date in the middle: 05 February, 2009.

Lulu Yang is a visual artist and illustrator. She graduated from Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology with a BA in Visual Communication in 2019.

Through her studies at the RCA, Lulu has developed a practice underpinned by theoretical reading, where written thought is synthesised with research questions and visual strategies to lead image-making. Her practice is informed by her unique experience of partial deafness, her interest in sound and hearing bringing new insights and often influencing many of her works.

Lulu uses illustration as a way of studying site and communicating with place. She has developed a critical approach to the conservation of community heritage and an interest in the use of memory as a carrier.

A mutilated illustration of a place that no longer physically exists.

Place is the carrier of memory, and memory is also the carrier of place. Place is an important part of event memory. We live in space all the time, so all events that happen to us are inextricably linked to the space around us, and memories always come with places. Therefore, when we explore the memories of events places often reappear unconsciously along with memories. Places exist because of the stories that took place. So, will places always exist as long as memories exist?

Her current work, The Place in Memories, tests this question by using four different types of memory of a specific event as a carrier to think about a place that no longer physically exists. It looks at a rural area in northern China, where four generations of her family have lived, and a specific event, her 12th birthday ceremony, an important ritual experienced by everyone in the local tradition. Her work explores 'Photographic Memory', 'Oral Memory', 'Diary Memory' and 'Internet Memory'. The places she sees through the different types of memories are different.

Old photos

Redrawn photos

Two illustrations depicting the same place in 1982 and 2015.

Three illustrations depicting the same place in 2015, 1995 and 2000.

Two illustrations depicting the same place in 1995 and 2009.

All the illustrations come together to form a complete place.

The first type of memory is the old 'Photographic Memory'. We live in space and the presence of place is often essential in our photographs, but the vast majority of photographs can only show a moment in time, and it is impossible to have two or more times in a still photograph. I am interested in this temporal characteristic, so I collected photos about my old home from different periods of time belonging to the same place. The same place appears in frozen different times.

Compared with 'Oral Memory', photographic memory does not have more information and explanation, but has clear colours and shapes. I have searched for traces of places in these photographic memories of different periods and redrawn them. They are from different times but depict the same place in its entirety. The photographs can be used to layer places through time and when these come together, places emerge.

Medium:

digital painting

The second type of memory is 'Oral Memory', which is like storytelling, but the order of the story is not chronological and controlled by the narrator.I have drawn key scenes from oral memory, and by the very nature of oral memory the order of these images is controlled, repeated, and backtracked, which creates a unique sequence of images. I used video as a medium to convey this, controlling the timing and order in which the viewer looked at each photograph.

In contrast to the 'Photographic Memory', instead of using bright colours and clear forms I use blurred images to convey the distance of the memories. Interestingly, one of them remains an old photograph. In photographic memory the photograph captures a memory which is frozen in a painting, so here too I have treated time differently. Oral memories are in real time following the order of the narrator, while the old photographs freeze time and the place is remembered and seen differently.

Medium:

pencil, digital

The third type of memory is 'Diary Memory', where the diary has a very clear sequence of events compared to the 'Oral Memory' and where we can revisit a certain moment in time. Instead of drawing new images for the diary I used a reordering of previous works to reflect the way diary memory is perceived. But the diary also says things that the photographs and oral stories don't say, because the diary talks about details, events and emotions. I used the book as a medium to allow the viewer to go back to a moment at any time they wish.

Medium:

pencil, digital

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The fourth type of memory is the 'Internet Memory'. Internet memory can expand other memories as the internet remembers and mixes everyone's memories in different ways. It can bring together everyone's experiences, it can bring more information to the story and it can bring back clarity to forgotten images.

This work is introduced through confusion and presents us with all the information we can choose at will.

Medium:

Mixed media

Lulu Yang

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Royal College of Art