Radical Return is co-curated by Mary Y. Yang, Assistant Professor of Art, Graphic Design at Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts and Zhongkai Li, Director of IS A GALLERY. The exhibition will be on view simultaneously at BU Art Galleries in Boston, Massachusetts from November 9 to December 12 and at IS A GALLERY in Shanghai, China from November 20 to December 20, 2021.

Drawing upon the history and origin of the site of IS A GALLERY, Yang and Li became interested in the ways in which designers can use Chinese typography as a point of inquiry to learn, innovate, and study graphic design from a non-linear approach. Each project initiated by Radical Characters is informed by a Hanzi (Chinese character) and extends into the forms of exhibitions, publications, lectures, and workshops. As Chinese American and Chinese graphic designers interested in cultural exchange in their own practices, Yang and Li hope that each project serves as a way to decentralize the design canon and to co-build history and community by initiating dialogues through educational experiences.

The selected work features 36 Chinese and Chinese American artists and graphic designers who explore acts of return through language, tradition, memory, identity, and history. This group of artists works across a range of media to embrace, challenge, and expand what it means to “return” in their artistic practice and in relation to their positions in the world today. The exhibition opens up a collective space to learn, innovate, and study graphic design from a non-linear approach as well as probes our societal traditions and cultures.