10 Questions with Shiyu (Icy) Qiao

Icy Qiao (b. 1997) is a London-based animation director, 2D & stop-motion animator, and illustration artist from China. She earned her Bachelor's degree in Animation from the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 2020 and her Master’s degree in Narrative Animation from the Royal College of Art in 2023.

Her themes are often drawn from personal experience, social psychology, and philosophy. Her works are not limited to a single medium and often encompass live-action, 2D animation, stop-motion animation, motion graphics, and installation. She perceives her creations as a healing process, engaging in a conversation with viewers through the dissection of memory and self.

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ARTIST STATEMENT

As an Asian artist, Icy Qiao's work is influenced by her own experiences and the social psychology phenomena in East Asia, including the great mother family structure, which is the opposite of the paternal society, pathological symbiosis, and giant baby psychology. She reflects on these issues from her own point of view by dissecting herself and regards her creative process as a kind of psychoanalysis. She believes that art is the most direct and sincere way of expression, through which the viewer can communicate with the author spiritually.

She considers herself a storyteller and tries to explore the boundary between animation and narrative. Instead of limiting herself to the field of traditional animation, she often adds other media to her works, such as live-action and installation, and tries to break the logic of linear narrative in terms of narrative techniques. The core of her creation is the expression and transmission of emotions.

INTERVIEW

First of all, introduce yourself to our readers. Please tell us more about your background and how you began making art.

I have been a silent child who has liked drawing since childhood. I really decided to start doing art when I was in high school. I used to be a "good student" in the eyes of my parents and teachers, with good grades and obedient behavior. However, I always felt unspeakable discomfort in this environment. Everyone just studied mechanically, and most of the time in the day was spent sitting in front of a desk filling out endless examination papers. One day, I had a sudden idea to do a survey. I asked many "good students" in my class if they had thought about what kind of person they would be and what kind of thing they would do in the future, but most of them gave vague answers. This made me realize that under Chinese education, children learn more to be obedient than to be themselves, and they cannot form a complete self. I was deeply afraid, so I decided to make a change. I left the "good student" group and chose to study art. For me, art was the most appropriate form of expression to connect with the outside world, and I hoped to explore and discuss the contradictions and conflicts I found in my life in this way.

How would you define yourself as an artist? And what makes you unique? 

I think art is just a medium that I use to observe the world and express my views. In the field of contemporary art, everyone can be an artist, and what sets us apart are our personal experiences and unique ways of thinking that we cannot reproduce. That's one of the reasons why most of my work starts with myself.

You work with different techniques and mediums, such as installation, video, and stop motion. Can you guide us through your creative process?

For me, in the process of creating art, the form serves the content. I am not limited to a particular technique as long as it is well suited to the content I want to express. For example, in <Self-inflicted Pain>, I'm trying to say that the falsification and emphasis of memories are self-inflicted pain. When a traumatic event has passed for many years, the pain you feel may already be disconnected from the event. It comes more from you. I chose the structure of a non-linear narrative that combined elements related to my trauma and used live action to represent the present, 2D animation to represent memory because it can create a sense of non-reality. They blend into one as they overlap back and forth, the mirror in the film and the installation is the exit of two worlds, where I met myself.

How much planning goes into each work, and where do you find inspiration? 

I have a memo file in my phone where I put all the inspirations that I find in my life, sometimes, they're just little thoughts, and sometimes they're the feelings that I have when I'm going through emotional ups and downs. It's interesting that there's always a subtle connection between them. When I start a project, I will collect all the inspirations from a certain period and make a mind map. Then I will conduct research and experiments along the clues of the mind map and finally create a work.

In your work, you reflect on social psychology phenomena from East Asia, as you mention in your statement. Can you tell us more about those? 

In fact, I started to think about social psychological phenomena in East Asia from the work <Self-inflicted Pain> because I found that my own problems are closely related to my cultural background, and most of my friends have similar problems, so I am very interested in this kind of topics. In an unfinished 2D animation I did last year, I explored the psychology of giant babies and pathological symbiosis relationships in East Asia. Giant baby mentality refers to the fact that an individual has developed into an adult physically, but still retains the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors of an infant mentally. The giant baby mentality leads to a pathological symbiosis relationship, which often occurs between children and their parents. As children grow up, it is brought into an intimate relationship, which is a difficult cycle to break. I used a narrative and surreal way to show this symbiotic relationship in this film.

And what messages are you trying to convey?

I want to convey and strengthen these contradictory phenomena through visual and abstract language so that the audience who have doubts about the environment, like me, can realize the existence of problems to trigger more thinking.

Do the themes you work with derive from your personal experience directly? And how are these experiences reflected in your work? 

Yes, my themes usually derive from me and then extend to sociological phenomena. When I was growing up, I often felt uncomfortable and insecure about my environment. I was always wondering why I felt the way I did. One of my tutors once said that if you can't even tell the truth in your work, there's no place else in the world where you can be genuine. The reason why I use personal experience as the starting point for creation is that emotion is the driving force of my creation. I cannot have great emotional ups and downs for things I have not experienced. These experiences make me who I am as an individual. In my work, I analyzed and reflected on the problems I observed by reviewing my experience and then extracted the key elements and emotions to create the core structure.

Since you live in the UK, did moving out of China help you recognize and address these phenomena?

Yes, after leaving China, I can clearly feel the cultural gap between East and West and what phenomenon is unique to China. Through comparison, I can view these issues from a different perspective.

What do you hope to accomplish this year, both in terms of career goals and personal life? 

This year is my last year in RCA. After graduation, I will continue to work in the UK, where the creative environment is relatively free. Because the styles of my previous works are very mixed, I hope to find a more iconic personal style this year. As for my personal life, I hope I will be more sincere and love life more.

Finally, what are you working on right now? Anything exciting you would like to tell our readers?

I'm currently working on my graduation project, which combines immersive storytelling and fabric installation. It tells the story of my experience of accidentally finding a suicide note left by my young self on the wall of the corridor in my hometown when I went back. In a surreal way, it depicts my childhood memories and how I realized my inner child and accepted her vulnerability, finally releasing and being liberated. In this project, I want to get out of my comfort zone, break the traditional mode of 2D animation in which the director decides the views and orders of shots, and let the audience participate in the film. Lead the audience through a process of art therapy I conduct in the form of animation, hoping to give some people who are trapped by childhood trauma courage and inspiration to face their own psychological problems. It will be shown at Truman Brewery in East London in July. You are welcome to come and have a chat with me.