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ArtEvol 2025 / Mengying Yang
The Vessel Ablaze , 2025 Experimental film 7 min 35 sec
Mengying Yang graduated with distinction from the MA in Graphic Design Communication at the University of the Arts London in 2021. Exhibitions include the London Design Festival 20th Anniversary in 2022 and the Florence Youth Art Festival in 2024. Yang was appointed as a contracted art mentor at the UAL Beijing Office in 2022. Recognition includes the Golden Pin Design Award, the Global Chinese Arts and Design Award and the CGDA Visual Communication Design Award. Yang’s practice focuses on the fluidity and ruptures of situated identity, drawing on ethnographic observation to capture tensions experienced among migration, boundaries and family. Ritual and metaphor function as narrative frameworks, allowing the work to explore emotional fractures and dilemmas of belonging within shifting geographical and social structures. Rather than representation alone, projects reconstruct liminal states, enabling encounters with the paradox of identity within the interplay of the familiar and the unfamiliar.
Artwork Introduction
The Vessel Ablaze draws on Longhu Town, Fujian, a departure point for clandestine migration, where the ocean embodies both livelihood and separation. Using the folk ritual of ‘burning the king’s boat’, Mengying Yang employs water, a fragile boat and ashes to explore fractured transnational families. Audiences interact with the elements, experiencing the tension between sacred integrity and familial disconnection, culminating in a ritual of migration, sacrifice and fading kinship.
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