Yiqi Zhang

Biography

Yiqi Zhang is a PhD candidate at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. Her research explores the development of conceptual frameworks for understanding the creation of graphic narratives from transcultural perspectives. She is currently examining the contrast, translation, and hybridity of multiple graphic narrative traditions across the globe. These most notably include comics traditions within Anglophone, Francophone and Japanese cultural spheres , as well as their encounters with those in between and outside of the contemporary context of comics. Her research is primarily practice-based, with a focus on the scope for creativity in comic production on the part of graphic storytellers like herself. To achieve this, she aims to:

• Examine the cultural positions of comic authors working at the intersection of multiple graphic narrative traditions by probing the cultural embeddedness of these traditions, through making and remaking the narratives that characterise them.
• Apprehend the forces at work in the creation of comics, which is a mode of communication highly mediated and influenced by the visual extrapolation of an author’s ideas , questioning how cultural projections play a part in the visions and limitations of graphic storytellers.
• Interrogate the viability of understanding comics as visual language by constructing graphic narratives for the purpose of transnational storytelling.
• Highlight the prevailing tension between the transnational nature of graphic narratives and the cultural attitudes or ethos of graphic storytellers through her practice.

Yiqi is also a practicing comics artist, exploring the interplay between theory and practice within the practice-led research paradigm through the medium of comics. For more information, please see https://www.yiqi-zhang.com.