2021

Jiayi Zhang (Neko)

Neko is an artist/ designer with a graphic related background. She prefers to deliver her observations of her surroundings through photography and editorial design. Meanwhile, she believes that comprehensive research and exquisite techniques can finally realise a sincere outcome.

Throughout her final year, she explored different methods to show her feelings about the accelerating urbanisation of Shenzhen, China – the city where she was raised. She is curious about the consequences of the phenomenon of the city‘s speedy development in the last 40 years. Therefore, she chose it as the shared subject across her works. In her further study, she would like to keep focusing on finding solutions to give her city a better quality of life for the future.

Shennan Boulevard

Shenzhen officially became a city in 1979. In the same year, state highway No.107 was reconstructed by the government and reborn with a new name: Shennan Boulevard. After numerous extensions and widenings, the road ended up at 25.6km in 1994. It connects Luohu to Nanshan district, from the old to the new.

This city is always in progress, filling the entire boulevard with skyscrapers. When driving on this road, I felt that I was passively accepting the urban landscape made by these behemoths, letting them dominate my head.

This publication contains photographs of 70+ buildings along Shennan Boulevard. I captured them through my car sunroof. I hope the viewers can experience the form and density of these high-rises, provoking reflection on the final form of urbanisation via this publication.

Pages: 156
Size: 200 x 365 mm

Night Garden

Compared to the accelerating urban construction speed, the growth of plants appears to be slow and quiet.

Chinese people love to buy mandarin orange bonsai during the Spring Festival. After the festival, usually the plants die, and their vases are abandoned in different corners of people’s living spaces. Gradually, old vases are reused or occupied by wild plants naturally.

This publication recorded the mapping and photography of the 26 plants spots in Ningshui Garden – where it is ready to be reconstructed soon. To better represent the adventure of hunting for plants with a torch at night, I adopted screen printing on each photo with glow-in-the-dark ink to imitate the cone of light.

Will they still be there after years? Will this beautiful natural scenery exist in the modern future that people expect?

Pages: 26
Size: 120 x 230 mm

noynoy

We hope that this is an active, casual and young space.

There is always at least one cultural experience place (for example, a bookstore) in every well-known city that could be treated as a landmark or a tourist spot. However, as China’s fastest-growing city, Shenzhen still does not have an iconic one – the city lacks local brands!

Through a large number of desk & test research, field studies and interviews, me and my friend decided to launch a space that combines a café, a bookstore and a gallery.

“noynoy” comes from the pronunciation of the word “女女” (neoi neoi), which usually describe a smart girl/ daughter in Cantonese. It also could be interpreted as “挪挪” (nuo nuo) in Mandarin, which means a slow move. We selected this name not only because we are all females, but we also wanted the name itself to let people feel a bit slowed down from the hustle and busy life.

Business cards were made in two colours of paper and printed in spot colours on both sides. Envelopes printed by hot matte foil stamp.

Jiayi Zhang (Neko)

Email address

Instagram

Biography