about
Hi there! I'm Joanna Liang (she/her), a multidisciplinary visual artist who also writes poetry. My artistic practice encompasses many mediums including bookmaking, illustration, photography, sculpture, sequential art, and poetry. I'm currently pursuing my BFA in Visual Arts and a Minor in Art + Text at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, on the unceded territories of the xwmƏ0kwƏýƏm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. I love petting my cat, listening to the rain, and planting new seeds in my garden.I’ve found the book medium to be such a wonderful meeting place for all the multitudes my art practice contains as it can include the still photograph and sequential illustration, be a tangible sculpture, and hold the poetic written word. They are stories you can hold and feel with your hands, with the ability to be personal and communal all at once. My work often expresses longing for unknown futures while acknowledging the feelings of grief and helplessness of not knowing how to get there, especially in regards to the climate crisis. I am also particularly fond of working with human-made found objects and gathered natural materials.
email me at: [email protected]
here's a 'lil gallery view sampler of some of my work!:
book arts - Last Name (2023)
book arts - sunlight is moonlight (2023)
photography - lending hands (2022)
sculpture - build a home (2020)
illustration - (2023)
sculpture - Fruitless longing (2020)
sculpture - everything burns (2021)
photography - autumn flowers and compost (2022)
illustration - (2023)
book arts - all over (2023)
book arts - Hazelnuts grow on trees (2022)
animation - Bugbear (2020)
book arts - Last Name (2023)
photography - a sweeter checklist (2022)
illustration - Homemade Seeds comic (2023)
photography - golden ribbon (2022)
animation - Favourite Liar (2022)
photography - cindy and linda's garden (2022)
illustration - Citrus Clementine comic (2023)
photography - oh morning (2022)
illustration - (2022)
photography - Space Out of Time (2022)
sculpture - what remains (2021)
animation - She Wants Me (to be loved) (2021)
animation - commission (2021)
illustration - theatre poster design (2021)
animation - Sin Triangle (2020)
illustration - commission (2023)
book arts - i sight freeze (2023)
book arts - all over (2023)
photography - history of the garden bathtub (2022)
illustration - Starlight (2023)
illustration - Connected (2020)
illustration - (2022)
animation - Sin Triangle (2020)
book arts - 2 dreams about disaster (2022)
book arts
photography
a life(,) you know(?) (2022)
13.5” x 9.2” Digital photography series of 20
A series dedicated to intimacy. Found in community gardens, golden light, and human beings.
golden ribbon
tree decorated with new leaves
kaleidoscope home
a sweeter checklist
garden shed side
autumn flowers and compost
lending hands
a pair of gardening glasses
a pair of gardening scissors
neighbours
Fruit Tree Project's Sharing Farm garden
the carriere garden
cindy and linda's garden
for october
little wallflower
let's go through the garden
secret passageway
to pull up a chair
history of the garden bathtub
we will never stop looking at sunsets
of yellow soap and whiteness (2019)
Digital photography series of 13
Inspired by a quote from The Lover by Marguerite Duras: “the delicious smell of wet earth after a storm, enough to make you wild with delight, especially when it’s mixed with the other, the smell of yellow soap […] of whiteness” (61). It’s about a relationship that takes too much, until it ends and the memory of it is attempted to be scrubbed clean. Everything is washed off but the scent still lingers.
Space out of Time (2022)
Digital photography series of 10
Space out of Time is about documenting time that passes without your notice. Spacing out, losing awareness, liminal spaces, compacted into an image through long exposure photography.
Unwanted (2020)
Digital photography series of 13
Unwanted explores the often arbitrary nature of classifying a plant as a "weed". Weeds are subjective; by definition, they are just plants one does not want somewhere. Using static and blurring effects to distort the images, I’ve drawn more attention to the rebelliousness, resilience, and persistence of these plants.
Analogue photography
Black and white / colour film
Analogue photography work from 2021 - 2022.
illustration
Digital illustration
Illustrated with Adobe Photoshop
Digital illustration work from 2019-2023.
Design
Designed with Adobe Illustrator
Comics
Illustrated with Adobe Photoshop
Homemade Seeds (2023):
Citrus Clementine (2023):
All Over (2023): (see final printed book here)
Last Name (2023): (see final printed book here)
Printmaking
Lino and intaglio
other work
sculpture & mixed media
What Remains (2021)
Sculptures and video
This series of work is about memory and the passage of time. Candles are lit for birthdays and funerals, for joy and sorrow.
The glowing candles parallel how people glow bright, burn out, and how even in their absence will leave something behind.
mourning celebration
animation
Animated videos
Animated with Adobe Photoshop, Edited with Adobe Premiere
Animation work from 2020-2023. See more on my Youtube.
poetry
Last Name / First Name (最后的名字)I paid respects to a ghost I did not know
Bowed once, twice,
thrice with my cat in my arms
I didn’t know my last name had a memorial, a temple,
a place for last names to rest within four blue walls
I watched indecisively as my father spilled a trail of rice wine
kitchen-counter-turned-altar
The fragrance of it filling the air ,
As they set off firecrackers inside the small screen of my last name’s phone
alternate / universesWhat’s the difference between a firecracker and a firework
Gunpowder combusting outside my house in celebration for Halloween night
The lights in the phone like a flare
I was made aware of the distance between myself and
the four blue walls in space and time and knowing
As the fireworks lagged /hes itate d andCRACKED
Bursting in false-time, physics laws unraveling
as I heard the sound before the light7:33pm 2022, 31, Oct.
I feel like I’m losing something
Or losing someone
I look at her
5 years younger
And I say I don’t think I know you anymore
And she reaches out to me
With a nonexistent hand touches my face and says
It’s okay
I want to have a conversation with the mirror
Because I think she who lives in there right now is my best and only friend
I’ve never felt so alone yet so surrounded by so many iterations of myself
My body, the image of my body
Superimposed over itself so many times
That I can’t meet the eye of my mirror
I can’t recognize the face of my graduating self
But I remember the wink
And the movement
And the going out the doors
(Jun.13,2021 1:52am)
an invitation to anythingOpen the door and
let everything in
Every terrible feeling track muddy footprints
over the blank floors
Every stranger emotion slip by you when you
answer the door looking around for who
knocked
And let them tear down curtains and knock over lamps behind you
Leave the door open
Throw out the key
Do not be tempted into locking that one
entrance you have
To life
Do not shatter your windows to feel wind on
your face
Open the door
(Feb. 27,2020 (12:50)
How, exactly
Does the world end?
Not
With a bang
But just another everyday feeling
The oddness of circumstance
And chance?
Unpredictable
And
Suffocatingly normal
A reality too unreal for the mind to accept
A fiction so unworldly it’s a story the heart won’t listen to
Is this how the world ends?
With the dire edges of transition
Crumbling beneath the Earth
In a silent upheaval
So unforgiving
The world is violently forced into change
Is this how the world ends?
With the burning feeling of something new
about to tear its way into
A new beginning?
(Mar. 17,2020 it’s the infinite ending of the world)
How, exactly
Does the world end?
Not
With a bang
But just another everyday feeling
The oddness of circumstance
And chance?
Unpredictable
And
Suffocatingly normal
A reality too unreal for the mind to accept
A fiction so unworldly it’s a story the heart won’t listen to
Is this how the world ends?
With the dire edges of transition
Crumbling beneath the Earth
In a silent upheaval
So unforgiving
The world is violently forced into change
Is this how the world ends?
With the burning feeling of something new
about to tear its way into
A new beginning?
(Mar. 17,2020 it’s the infinite ending of the world)