Ziyuan Wang

Visual Communication (MA)
Ziyuan Wang is an illustrator with long hair and black suit
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Case A, female, 24 She is a designer of Al voice assistants-yet dreads speaking to machines all day. Her life has been shaped by relentless pressure: academic stress, job market anxiety, and above all, the crushing cycle at work-where her depression and anxiety make her slower, and her boss's scolding echoes long into sleepless nights. She grows tired of this system. A system obsessed with speed, productivity, and serving only the privileged. Illness becomes something shameful-another sign of inefficiency. She's hyper-aware of her surroundings. Noise and crowds overwhelm her. When depression hits, she feels disconnected from her body, her thoughts spinning like a top, like an overheated machine. On the edge of collapse, she found a path back to herself through meditation. Her spirit drifts out of her "social self" and transforms into something else-a plant, a small animal, eternal and aimless. Deep within, she feels a quiet joy, an unexpected calm.
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Case B, Male, 41 In 2014, he was diagnosed with HIV. Three years earlier, he had been studying abroad in Japan. During that time, he grew close to someone he met online. When he returned home in June 2014 to look for a job, the person invited him to meet in person-then drugged and raped him. After the diagnosis, he fell into despair. Back then, he believed he wouldn't live much longer. Because of HIV, he struggles to find stable work. Though his family doesn't discriminate against him, he also doesn't feel truly supported. Now, he relies on livestreaming to share his story and make a living. But each stream is a kind of torment—he's forced to revisit that traumatic memory and face the judgment of strangers online. Some even see his illness as something useful. People have asked him to help collect debts, believing his blood could be used to scare others into submission. To them, he's not a person-just a tool.
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Case C, female,@positivemumoftwo She was diagnosed with HIV in 2016. Her former partner-who knowingly hid his own HIV status— left her not only infected, but isolated. Their abusive relationship lasted from 2015 to 2021, pulling her away from family and friends. Only after the breakup did things begin to shift. Today, she is surrounded by the support of her current partner, her family, and her friends. But the very system that was meant to understand and support her-the healthcare system-became a source of harm. She was denied the right to breastfeed her first child because a midwife told her, wrongly, that people with HIV shouldn't. This, despite her HIV care team clearly stating it was safe. She wanted a water birth. They refused. Only after she fought for herself was she allowed into the birthing pool. Later, when she applied for a role within the NHS, her supervisor suggested that patients might not want to be cared for by someone like her. She challenged the idea. The supervisor backed down. But the damage had been done-she no longer wanted to work in that system.
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In this work, I created four fanatical Beatles devotees—so obsessed that they dismiss all music that isn’t by the Beatles. This setup serves as a satire of cultural authority: in the 1960s, the music industry followed in the Beatles’ footsteps almost without exception. At the same time, I question the opposite extreme found in today’s decentralized entertainment industry—where an overwhelming flood of hastily produced, social media-driven “fast music” dominates. The story moves between these contradictions, critiquing cultural dominance while also reflecting on fragmentation. The narrative is built around a “what if we could start over” scenario: four ultra-wealthy individuals construct a private island and populate it with cloned versions of the Beatles. They attempt to recreate the band’s success and intervene in key moments of their career, trying to prevent the breakup. Yet they repeatedly outsmart themselves, and history seems inevitably drawn back to its predetermined path. All they can do is keep cloning the Beatles in the wake of failure. Perhaps the next attempt will succeed—or perhaps it never will. This entire work is filled with my personal tensions and contradictions: resisting fate while imposing it on others; yearning for reunion while portraying separation as liberation; longing for the past while refusing to be trapped by it.

About

Ziyuan Wang is a visual communication designer and illustrator whose practice explores the intersection between narrative, identity, and the politics of visibility. With a focus on illness, social stigma, and emotional expression, his work transforms research-based interviews into poetic visual forms—ranging from publications and installations to interactive print experiments.

Coming from a non-traditional art background, Wang approaches visual storytelling with both emotional intuition and analytical depth. His recent work investigates how diseases like HIV and depression are metaphorically represented and socially silenced. Through participant-led archives and materials like thermosensitive ink, he invites audiences to engage not only visually, but physically—with stories that are often unheard or unseen.

A passionate collector of black-and-white comics and a devoted Beatles fan, Wang’s artistic language draws from the raw expressiveness of graphic novels and the cultural undercurrents of subversion. His practice lies between illustration, publishing, and critical social inquiry, aiming to create visual work that is both intimate and reflective.

#半路出家的野生插画师#黑白漫画收藏家#披头士脑残粉#Angryboy

Ins：wang_96_7

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