Li Yao

Lives and works in Chicago, IL

Artist statement

I am a visual artist and illustrator based in Chicago, born in Guangzhou, and trained across illustration and art & technology studies. My practice began as truancy. Throughout my school days in China, every student's output was supervised and regulated according to the official agenda, down to one's diary, casual speech, and personal attire. Drawing comics became my only expressive outlet because it was too much of an outlier to be governed by the academy standard. And comics, for a kid growing up in Guangzhou -- a city known for its commerce, not cultural prestige -- was my window to the world. In high school, I skipped classes to sit in a McDonald's and draw all day, eavesdropping on stay-at-home aunties holding secret cult gatherings in the next booth. The aunties were prophesying with a picture book showing a Taoist goddess and a space shuttle. I was, in my booth, drawing a panopticon built into an underground cave, where teenagers competed against each other for survival. McDonald's anonymous, fluorescent, plastic haven turned out to be the safest room in the city for rudimentary imagination. I've only known Chinese education to be one of selection, not cultivation. For the purpose of self-cultivation, I have to assemble my own formation. Yes to Bridgman's drawing textbooks. No to the dogmatic Soviet-style entrance exam. Yes to the Atelier method for training illustrators. No to the Disney pipeline. Yes to storytelling through virtual environment design. No to...

Artwork