Emotional Pollutants
Xiao Lyu
Illustration (School of Graduate Studies)
About this Item
- Title
- Emotional Pollutants
- Date
- 2024
- Summary/Artist's Statement
- Artist Statement:
-
Xiao Lyu is a visual artist based in New York City.
He finds joy in the dynamic interplay of different artistic disciplines and works with a broad spectrum of skills encompassing illustration, graphic design, concept design, gaming art and photography.
He earned his BFA in Art and Design from the China Academy of Art and has worked for years as a graphic designer, gaming artist, photographer, and art director. Xiao also ran his own graphic studio with a partner. After graduating from the MFA program in Illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, he continues to develop his unique visual language, primarily in digital media but also exploring traditional mediums, balancing abstract and interpretable surrealism.
Xiao believes visual art creations should be open-minded and diverse. Growing up and living at the intersection of East Asian and North American cultures, he takes pride in his cultural diversity. This diversity is a defining feature of his art and fuels his passion and curiosity to engage with different and exciting visual art projects continually.
Xiao aims to create visual art that would resonate audiences and evokes a sense of curiosity. - About this Work:
- This series visualizes how I experience, process, and visualize specific phenomena I consider “emotional pollutants.”
- A variety of factors in daily life influence our emotions and mindsets. Some of them are positive, such as friendships built on mutual assistance, unwavering support, and love; some are negative, such as carrying overloaded expectations on your shoulders, the one who talks sweet but stabs you in the back, and the fear of falling behind the majority. These negative factors would generate mental pollution. Over time, they can gradually contaminate our consciousness, disrupting our mental health. They reflect outwardly, manifesting as fatigue, negativity, depression, irritability, and emitting negative vibes. For these reasons, I call them ‘emotional pollutants’.
- Emotional pollutants usually come from different environments and vary in scale and impact. Some are big like the society, or the industry you’re in, and some are small like your office or your home. Some of them are obvious, while others are subtle and progressive, which may go unnoticed- gradually overcoming us like a frog in boiling water.
- Being aware of the existence of these pollutants that directly or indirectly pollute our emotions and understanding how they function can help improve our tolerance to those emotional pollutants, quickly metabolize the negative emotional garbage they generate, and maintain our good mental health.
- Title for each painting: Sea Urchin Breakers; Implicit Cues; Emotional Manipulation; Communication? No, pollution; Information Cocoons; Authority Worship; Consumer Indoctrination; Disillusionment Moments; Honey Tongue, Hidden Daggers; Information Explosion & Notification Bombing; Tea Connoisseurs; Atmosphere Envelopment; Expectations; Ocean Heart
- Creation Date: Sep 2023 to May 2024
- Medium
- Adobe Photoshop
- Course/Degree Information
- Program/Degree: Illustration MFA
- Academic Semester: Spring 2024
- In Exhibition
-
Flood: Class of 2024 Visual Thesis Exhibition
- Rights
- In Copyright
- Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
- The copyright for this work is held by its author/creator(s). Usage of this material beyond what is permitted by copyright law must first be cleared with the rights-holder(s). This work has been made available online by the Fashion Institute of Technology Gladys Marcus Library strictly for research and educational purposes. If you are the copyright holder for this work and have any objections to this work being made available online, please notify us immediately at [email protected].
- Identifier
- FIT Repository ID: il_mfa_000004
Citation
Lyu, X. (2024). Emotional Pollutants. FIT Institutional Repository. https://institutionalrepository.fitnyc.edu/item/398789
Lyu, Xiao. Emotional Pollutants. 2024. FIT Digital Repository, https://institutionalrepository.fitnyc.edu/item/398789
Lyu, Xiao. "Emotional Pollutants." FIT Digital Repository, 2024. https://institutionalrepository.fitnyc.edu/item/398789