INDEFINITE
Yifan Luo
Indefinite is a collection of 2020 vignettes in the form of visual narratives, interviews, and observational illustrations. The project preserves some of the personal stories of a year defined by uncertainty in the midst of a global pandemic and social, political, and environmental change. It also provides insight into ways that individuals and small businesses (in Baltimore and beyond) are adapting, processing, and finding comfort and community.
The full compilation will be released in May/June 2021. If you are interested in receiving updates or obtaining a limited physical copy, please contact the artist at yifan@yifanluo.com.
Masked
Samples from a visual essay exploring the early days of mask guidelines and their connection to the rise of anti-Asian xenophobia in the U.S.
The final narrative will be printed into a Risograph zine.
Pandemic Purchases
As quarantine went into effect, many people turned to material goods and animal companions to animate their personal spaces and cope with their new reality. Homes became makeshift offices, classrooms, gyms, spas, and havens.
Time will tell if any of these pandemic purchases are here to stay, or simply whimsical remnants of a surreal time.
Interviews with Baltimore Small Businesses: The Land of Kush + Illusions
An award-winning Baltimore bistro and a magic theater discuss some of the ways their businesses changed and adapted during the pandemic.
Interview with a Baltimore Small Business:
Industry Athletics
Members of Baltimore gym Industry Athletics (IA) discuss why they have stuck with around during the pandemic. Samples from an illustrated interview.
Interview with Educators
Eight educators from U.S. primary and secondary schools share words of encouragement for their students.
Apocalypse Now
This series of paintings was inspired by mobile phone photos taken by the artist’s friends and acquaintances in the Bay Area, California, on September 9th, 2020. Local wildfires were raging and had turned the sky a surreal red. These paintings were sold as a limited run of prints, with all the proceeds going to nonprofits providing relief and advocacy for California agriculture workers impacted by the fires.
Election Day in Baltimore
A series of sketchbook images drawn at one of Baltimore’s polling stations on election day, November 6, 2020.
Pulse
Sketches inspired by doomscrolling: U.S. news and pop culture moments for each month from January 2020 to January 2021, set against a graph of U.S. COVID positivity rates. Risograph printed and folded into a one-page carousel zine with no set beginning nor end.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Yifan Luo is a Baltimore-based illustrator, storyteller, and memory collector. She draws inspiration from the people, environments, foods, and traditions of places she has visited or called home. She has a soft spot for traditional materials and can often be found noodling in her sketchbook with a brush pen, watercolor and gouache paints, and wax crayons.
Her focuses include visual journalism/portraiture, editorial, food illustration, and children’s markets. She is interested in projects that explore current events, intersectional environmentalism, and multiculturalism.