Ray Fang Rui Wu

Chinesevirus

Class of: 2023

Major: Product Design BFA

Medium: Video

Faculty: Matt Whitman

Prompt: As humans, we leave traces of ourselves, our bodies, our being, in nearly everything that we do, make, design, destroy. Choose such a trace and locate other instances/moments where this trace might exist (or consider creating ‘traces’ of your own). Due to the coronavirus, project prompt allowed to include such a topic or focus on this particular topic.

This piece illustrates one ugly but realistic situation in our hands during the COVID-19: racism. I wanted to emphasize the xenophobia that Asian people have to face living in a white/black community, and yet still get up and live their life every day under such circumstances. I used stick figure drawing and extracted a few audios from important incidents of hate crime and public figures projecting such thoughts to put highlights on the ugly perspective, and really get across the idea of the perspective of the victims, to let the audience understand what it is like to be discriminated, therefore spread the message of eliminating xenophobia. I also used colors to emphasize the idea of coronavirus, as well as the ethnicity of the main character. (The other white character has no ethnicity, just a portrait of a criminal).