Yuxuan Zhu (Kiki)

About

SAY HI

I am Yuxuan Zhu(Kiki), an ENFP designer who is actively exploring the secrets of the functioning of nature and human society.

Before joining RCA, I had been firmly on the path of interior design, achieving excellent results at the China Academy of Art and gaining a lot of practical experience in the subsequent 3 years of designing retail spaces. But as I continued to move forward, I began to question the true role and significance of spatial design in the property industry, and even more broadly.

·        Is space design really just about physical space?

·        Is space the best way to convey consciousness?

·        If not, then what other narrative devices can be useful?

With these questions in mind, I came to the RCA to begin a year of study in Environmental Architecture. During this process, I focused my research on pollination systems, primarily exploring the connections between ecology, myth, consciousness and art, and completed the project Divining Pollinators.

Project Brief

The research site for the project Divining Pollinators is located on the island of Crete in southern Greece. Based on our analyses of the local pollination system, we created a spiritual storytelling installation which refers to actual ecological issues and future trends.

The term myth primarily expresses a narrative and can also be understood as an ancient scientific method. The project Divining Pollinators seeks to be a medium for dialogue between myth, ecology and art, exploring the relationships and changes in the elements of the pollination system in the historical, present and future scenarios of the region by bringing in the perspectives of the pollinators, the plants and the climate, attempting to explore how we relate to and understand it, highlighting that these marginalized roles are changing. To provide a new perspective for redefining the relationship between time, place and ecology.

At the same time, we created cards for the elements of the story, each with its own interpretation and understanding of the graphic message, with the aim of exploring the relationship between the pollination circle and the lives of each of us, trying to examine our relationship with and understanding of the pollination system, and to what extent changes in these relationships and the inclusion of new characters have affected or disrupted the pollination chain, revisiting it from a new point of view climate, plants and pollinators, and the relationships between us.

Out of thousands of narratives, we chose to record and present one in the form of video.

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Divining Pollinators is a collaboration project between Yuxuan Zhu, Jiayu Dai and Yujia Zhou.

Contact

E-mail: yuxuanzhu_ki@outlook.com

ins: kikiii_zhu