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No.1 BEST

CHINESE TATTOO SHOP

Treated more as an aesthetic, instead of a language, Chinese characters have made an impact on visual cultures of the West. Westerners like to have Chinese tattoos without actually knowing the cultural context they carry, and sometimes even the actual meaning of the words.

 

To create an open dialogue on how the West is capitalizing on the “exotic charm” of the Chinese language, this pop-up store project presents a conceptual space that displays a series of tattoos that use original fonts and graphics that Niki designed. The tattoos combined highly stylized English letters with the aesthetics of Chinese brush strokes to resemble Chinese characters. These tattoos play with the illegibility and exoticism of Chinese characters while selecting humorous phrases from popular culture and every day slang.

 

The audience is welcome to lounge around, purchase products with tattoo graphics, and apply the temporary tattoo stickers onto their body, while the artist Niki was playing the role of the shop assistant. The intention behind this interaction is to show how cultures can be appropriated, reclaimed and repurposed by other cultural backgrounds and perspectives, sometimes creating a cultural disparity in which feeble attempts at understanding can promote misinterpretation and ignorance rather than transparency, respect, and clarity.

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No.1 Best Chinese Tattoo Shop

No.1 Best Chinese Tattoo Shop

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BOOK DESIGN

<Untranslation - Disunderstanding - Disinterpretation>

 

By showing cross-cultural misinterpretations and the intentionality of modified forms of English and Chinese, this artist book is about how cultural signifiers can be repurposed and reclaimed. The book focuses on how cultural disparity and people’s feeble attempts to understand different cultural heritages can promote ignorance, rather than transparency, respect and clarity.

This project won The First Prize of The Cathryn Griffith Award in the Graphic Arts Annual, 2018 

Finish size:

7" x 7" 

60 pages

Hardcover

1st Edition

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MARKETING GIFT KIT

 

Gift kit designed for Laguarda.Low Architects's marketing purposes.

The kit includes 2 brochures, 1 poster, and 1 USB drive. 

SHOW BOOTH

 

Trade show booth designed for Laguarda.Low Architects at the 2019 MAPIC, an international retail property market event for key property players and cities to build the ultimate lifestyle and shopping destinations.  

Dates: Nov 13, 2019 – Nov 15, 2019

LocationPalais des Festivals, Cannes, France

CONNECTED BOSTON 

PROJECT 

Posters and gifs designed for Connected Boston -- a program of The Multicultural AIDS Coalition (MAC), Boston's No.1 health navigator for LGBTQ people.

POSTERS

GIFS

PUBLIC DISPLAY

SOCIAL MEDIA / PRINT COLLATERAL

ANIMATIONS

 

Animations created for Laguarda.Low Architects, a NYC-based architecture firm.

2021 Happy Chinese New Year
00:35
2021 Happy Holidays
00:30
2020 Happy Chinese New Year
00:26
2020 Happy Holidays
00:27
2019 Happy Chinese New Year
00:30
2019 Happy Holidays
00:30
Earth Week 2019
00:26
A Deep Dive into the Nanjing Master Plan
03:48
Laguarda.Low Architects - Firm Approach
01:28
Laguarda.Low Architects - Team Office
00:36
Laguarda.Low Architects - Expertise Retail