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# Project Description The Departure of Them, The Return of Us Huayi Liao Summary Final work Awards Winner | Graduate Award 2025 Huayi Liao is a graphic designer and illustrator from Guangxi, China. Her practice explores local culture in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region through archival materials, narrative, and illustration. She focuses on the cultural identity issues arising from the collision between minority and mainstream culture amid social change and population movement. Her work seeks to re-examine local histories from multiple perspectives and to create emotional resonance as a form of connection. Huayi Liao is a graphic designer and illustrator from Guangxi, China. Her practice explores local... College Central Saint Martins Course MA Graphic Communication Design Graduation year 2025 The Departure of Them, The Return of Us explores the multiple connections within fragmented materials, and how these connections can be built and presented through the format of publication. It seeks to present the similar trajectories and circumstances experienced by the migrant population in Guangxi, China, from the 1980s to the present day—composed through the juxtaposition of intergenerational stories, and the loose intersections between photographs and letters. This project uses the language of publication to respond to the complexity of material associations. It sees each page as a bridge guiding the reader between the individuality of each fragment and the collective meaning they form. Final work Four publications, increasing in size from small to large, accommodate all materials and connections. On the left side of each spread, The Departure of Them documents the outward movement of a generation during China’s Reform and Opening era; on the right, The Return of Us traces the journey of a younger, millennial generation returning along similar routes. Linked by the notion of a railway, each booklet represents a stage of movement—from rural to urban, from childhood to adulthood. Inspired by visual associations and puzzles, the incomplete, cut-up images and diagrams create direct links between the booklets, inviting the reader to assemble the pages and reveal a larger picture. Fifty years ago, at the age of thirteen, my father unable to endure the poverty and heavy farm labor, secretly vowed to leave the village he was born. Over the decades, he journeyed from Tianmen Mountain to Huaqun Town, Luocheng, and Liuzhou, eventually leaving Guangxi altogether. By chance, he developed an interest in taking film photographs; but until the old family house was cleared for rental, the photographs, along with letters he had received in the past, had long been forgotten. They look like the prototype of an archive, underlining the locality, the era, the cycle of things, the causal relation between the past and the present. This project is grounded in the reflection upon these found materials. Through cataloguing, assembling, re-cataloguing and re-assembling, the many possible directions of narrative migration are revealed, intertwined and overlapped. Research and process This project began as a response to and supplement of the missing perspectives in the official archives: an attempt to weave a more favourable, intimate archive. Such an archive would not need the type of narrative based on timelines or institutionalised rules that official documents have, but would be based on connections between images, experiences at a particular age, emotional echoes, or a combination of these elements. It is woven more like the editing of a film, with interpolations, flashbacks and montages. From the change of address on the letters, I witnessed the occurrence of migration. Migration brings separation; first from the original home and its geographical location, then from the interpersonal relationships built in that place, and eventually from cultural belonging itself: the differences between rural and urban life, or between Guangxi and outside regions. These emotions and dislocations resulting from mobility are shared experiences across generations of migrants. They form a central theme throughout this project. Share this project The Departure of Them, The Return of Us explores the multiple connections within fragmented materials, and how these connections can be built and presented through the format of publication. It seeks to present the similar trajectories and circumstanc... A link to this page has been added to your clipboard Browse related work Archives & Collections Histories CulturalIdentity FoundMaterial Narrative Migration
# Links ## Official page - https://ualshowcase.arts.ac.uk/project/636533/cover ## External - https://www.instagram.com/feleven_ - https://huayiliao.cargo.site - mailto:rredbayoo@gmail.com - https://portfolio-tools.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/02162146/pdf-for-online-1.pdf - https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fualshowcase.arts.ac.uk%2Fproject%2F636533%2Fcover&text=The+Departure+of+Them%2C+The+Return+of+Us - https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fualshowcase.arts.ac.uk%2Fproject%2F636533%2Fcover&media=https%3A%2F%2Fportfolio-tools.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F06%2F03035523%2F13dsfa.jpg&description=The+Departure+of+Them%2C+The+Return+of+Us