In art as in life

This article was originally published on Neocha and is republished with permission.

For some, art is mainly a method of self-expression. But for Shanghai-based illustrator Lli Yulong, art also comes with a certain responsibility. It was a realization that the Chinese artist only arrived at after plenty of soul searching. To him, art is wielded as a means of offering people clarity on what truly matters in life, whether it be love or something as simple as a delicious meal shared with friends. Art, at its core, can elevate the mundane to the profound, and good art should come without ego. It’s precisely these aspects of Lli’s work that make it so relatable and enjoyable. “When I work, I try to put aside any hubris, and just be more open,” he says. “I try to be in attunement with the world so that I can truly savor and experience it all.”

Since graduating from the China Academy of Art in 2017, he’s found recognition from the art world both domestically and abroad. He’s taken part in an art residency at Shanghai’s Swatch Art Peace Hotel and received awards from a number of prestigious competitions, such as the World Illustration Awards, the Society of Illustrators, Adobe Top Talent, and more. He’s also created illustrations for media outlets and commercial brands alike, working with names like New York Times, GQ, Apple, Google, and more.

During university, Lli was fascinated by the differences between Western and Eastern aesthetics. These disparities, he noted, allowed people to discern the origins of certain pieces of art and media. As he saw it, motifs in Eastern art tended to rely on subtleties—with artists looking to tell stories and evoke emotions in nuanced ways. Motifs in Western art are more straightforward, pared-down, and more rigid in composition. He appreciated both methods and saw an opportunity in incorporating qualities from both worlds within his work. His illustrations today—with influences culled from vintage posters, contemporary art, and graphic design—exemplify this marriage of aesthetics. “When ideating a piece, I prioritize inspiration from the culture and art traditions that I’m familiar with,” he says. “That’s all then mixed together with my interests and fascination with Western aesthetics.”

New Year Reunion Dinner is a series that Lli began working on when he was an exchange student in England. Food, he believed, was an ideal motif that can both ground himself in his heritage and offer a level of relatability with Western audiences.

Born in Jiangsu, having studied in Shanghai and England, and with a significant other from Hong Kong, Lli looked back on his fondest culinary memories from these places to create the series. Dishes he drew include a pickled cabbage that his mother used to make in China, Cantonese sweet soup, a braised chicken and flour roll dish from Northwest China, and Shanghainese sweet-and-sour pork ribs. This menu was, at its essence, Lli’s life story summed up in illustraive form.

Sharing stories and experiences are at the heart of Lli’s illustrations. In a separate project titled Food Words of Shanghainese, he again uses the food motif to offer his perspective of Shanghai. In it, Lli draws a diverse spectrum of Shanghai’s inhabitants, as interpreted by common slang derived from varying dishes and ingredients. Take, for example, three-delicacy soup, a Zhejiang culinary staple, which when phrased as “rotten three-delicacy soup” refers to a person who’s absent-minded and unreliable. Another is “onion bulbs,” a derogatory lingo referring a foreigner who behaves impulsively. There’s also youtiao, a Chinese fried dough and common breakfast item, which when compounded with the adjective “old” (lao 老) is used to describe a slimy, untrustworthy individual. Plenty of other playful illustrations based on these food-related colloquialisms also appears in the project, including Big Mac, bean sprouts, and pork bone powder.

“The mix of these recognizable and unfamiliar motifs add additional context and interpretive possibilities to each term,” he says. “I’m hoping to add a distinctive touch of humor to portray Shanghai’s inhabitants in a contemporary format, and in doing so, showcase the potential of language, and how regional culture shapes and influences people.”

A gentle warmth radiates from Lli’s illustrations. Even in busier compositions, there’s not a singular color that seems to pop out and draw unnecessary attention. The calming tenderness of his work is perhaps rooted in the relaxed state he prefers to work in. Despite avoiding overly flashy colors, he reveals that pink is his favorite. “Pink has long been associated with femininity, but the fact is, the color was originally an expression of masculinity,” he notes. “This misconception was perpetuated by the retail world.”
He’s long despised labeling of any kind, and with his art, he hopes to make changes to the status quo. In late 2021, he held an exhibition titled Love is Everything in Shanghai that aimed to subvert people’s preconceptions of what love can be.

The exhibition was inspired by a special issue of the New York Times photographed by Ryan McGinley. Titled Love City, the issue was a celebration of love in New York City through portraits of different couples kissing passionately.

The images Lli showcase in Love is Everything feature lovers of all genders (and even non-humans) with similarly locked lips. Beneath their chins, an outline of a heart centers the composition. The project aims to show the varied definitions of love, its power as a bonding agent, and the fact of love being primal energy that can’t be contained or controlled. The broad range of colors and techniques used in the series can almost make it seem like they were all made by different artists, but this is by design—the inconsistency is intended to drive home the idea of love existing in a multitude of forms. Despite the differences, these varying artworks being able to co-exist in a single series seems to speak to how, when it comes to love, boundaries aren’t boundaries at all.

Lli lives his life with an unwavering insistence. More so than mere technique, his talent lies in the way he’s able to distill his life experiences and aspirations into a visual format that’s relatable to wide audiences. His illustrations are designed to celebrate mundanity, inspire thought, interrogate injustices, and help people understand that we’re not all that different. “It’s important to be attuned to your true self, the person who you are in the present moment,” Lli says. “Once you have a grasp of that, you can have a better idea of where you want to go, and with that clarity, you’ll be able to make headway.”

Website: www.yulonglli.com
Weibo: @yulong-lli
Instagram: @yulonglli

Contributor: Pete Zhang