AFTER THE DARK
An exhibition series at SAIC BFA Show, Show Don’t Tell, and the Complex Transit Center (Jeju, Korea)
2020 Print
"After the Dark" is a pure typography-driven project. Two pieces of memories inspired it. Both of the memories happened while lying on my bed in the dark before going to sleep, except I had completely different feelings in the two cities that I lived in— Beijing (my home) and Chicago (my second home in the US).
Whenever I tried to sleep in Chicago at night, I could always hear the noises from the street and see the flashing lights by my window. It was so hard for me to fall asleep. Moreover, since I was living in a foreign country by myself, and all the school work added a lot of pressure, I always felt alone, nostalgic, and anxious. I just felt everything was too overwhelming.
On the contrary, in Beijing, when I turned off the light and tried to sleep, I saw nothing but the darkness and heard nothing but the natural sounds. Everything made me feel peaceful and calm.
Chicago piece
Beijing piece
For this project, I wanted to re-enact my two different experiences through typography. I chose two pieces of existing text as background, and I wrote two sentences by myself to express my feelings.
Chicago Piece Thought Process
I chose the lyrics from a hip-hop song called No Limit because I could always hear rap music on Chicago streets, and they reminded me of living in Chicago. I intentionally split the lyrics into different parts to make them feel like chaos. Also, I applied many colors to mimic the street light and all the noses visually. Some audiences also said that the shape of the lyrics reminded them of the Chicago skylines. I wrote the sentence, "I'm anxious because of all the lights I see and all the sounds I hear." I put it on a corner and made it almost invisible to better represent my anxiety and how overwhelmed I was!
Beijing Piece Thought Process
For the Beijing piece, I chose a poem written by John Keats, an English Romantic poet, called Sleep and Poetry and placed it in the background. English Romantic poems are all about eulogizing nature; English Romanticism is also known as "Naturalism)." Hence, I felt it was a good fit for it. I wrote, "I am calmed by the deepest dark." Like the one in my Chicago piece, this sentence was also a little hard to read because I wanted to exaggerate the peaceful feeling. Thus, everything was in the back except the highlighted sentence in dark blue, for which I intentionally wanted the audience to interact with my typography and spend time to find the "surprise."
For the best quality, please see the PDF version
1st draft (Beijing piece)
2nd draft (Beijing piece)
1st draft (Chicago piece)
2nd draft (Chicago piece)
Project photo from the SAIC BFA Show
15”x15” (posters)
The poster size varies in different exhibitions
From the exhibitions:
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BFA Show Installation
Me wallpapering my exhibition space. The whole installation process took me a good afternoon.
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Finishing Installation
Ta-daaaah!
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Jeju Exhibition Catalog
A cool catalog in both English and Korean that I received from the curator team.
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Jeju Exhibition Catalog
Here is my spread!