INTERVIEW WITH THE GUEST CURATOR
Empathy, distance, and interpretation
Sharpay Chenyue Yuan shares her approach to participatory research and working with archives
28 Oct 2025
28 Oct 2025
Sharpay Chenyue Yuan is a London-based illustrator, community practitioner and educator whose interest sits in exploring inter-relations between site and its social histories. In this conversation with an illustrator Ksenia Kopalova, she talks about her approach to participatory practice and her key takeaways from her conversations with Serena Katt and José García Oliva.
INTERVIEW
— Both José and Serena talk about how they negotiate their own position in their work. How has your own practice been evolving in this respect, and what is the main challenge for you here at the moment? Could you talk a little bit about the choices you made in this respect for ‘Pearl’s Daughters’ and your participatory projects, such as ‘City of collective ideals’ and ‘Urban Archaeology’?
— How I position myself is less about locating a fixed perspective than learning to move between empathy, distance, and interpretation. I see my role as creating spaces where mutual understanding can take form—even if through partial or imperfect translations. Illustration-making, for me, is an ongoing process of shifting perspectives and acknowledging the limitations inherent in every method. I tend to trust the specificity of each context, recognising that every approach introduces its own forms of bias and misinterpretation. It is equally important to me that the community can recognise and affirm my approach, and that the work contributes back to the community in ways meaningful to them. When developing methods or forms, I often try to locate the intersections where mutual understanding might emerge, allowing those moments to guide how the work takes shape.
In Pearl’s Daughters, I explored lives of migrant female factory labourers in the Pearl River Delta during the 1980s—driven both by nostalgia and reflection on individualism and collectivism after spending time observing another culture in London. Since fieldwork and interviews were impossible during lockdown, I turned to published personal writings by the workers themselves. These diaristic texts were unassuming, perhaps because their authors never expected to be read beyond their immediate circles. I selected first-person narrations quoted within existing journals, as the journals themselves often carried interpretative biases that conflicted with the authenticity of the workers’ voices. When woven together, these fragments began to articulate an unspoken collectivity. In parallel, I reproduced photographic archives of factories, where workers often appeared engaged in identical motions. Yet subtle variations: gestures, expressions, hairstyles, small personal accessories, stood out against the uniformity of their clothing and labour. The act of redrawing these archival photographs became a form of close reading, allowing me to notice nuances that might otherwise be overlooked. Through this process, I came to understand empathy not merely as an emotional response but as a methodological principle—rooted in observation, reinterpretation and a careful distance.
In Pearl’s Daughters, I explored lives of migrant female factory labourers in the Pearl River Delta during the 1980s—driven both by nostalgia and reflection on individualism and collectivism after spending time observing another culture in London. Since fieldwork and interviews were impossible during lockdown, I turned to published personal writings by the workers themselves. These diaristic texts were unassuming, perhaps because their authors never expected to be read beyond their immediate circles. I selected first-person narrations quoted within existing journals, as the journals themselves often carried interpretative biases that conflicted with the authenticity of the workers’ voices. When woven together, these fragments began to articulate an unspoken collectivity. In parallel, I reproduced photographic archives of factories, where workers often appeared engaged in identical motions. Yet subtle variations: gestures, expressions, hairstyles, small personal accessories, stood out against the uniformity of their clothing and labour. The act of redrawing these archival photographs became a form of close reading, allowing me to notice nuances that might otherwise be overlooked. Through this process, I came to understand empathy not merely as an emotional response but as a methodological principle—rooted in observation, reinterpretation and a careful distance.
It is equally important to me that the community can recognise and affirm my approach, and that the work contributes back to the community in ways meaningful to them.
— City of Collective Ideals and Urban Archaeology were developed in the former industrial district of Ronggui in the Pearl River Delta during my 2024 residency, where urban redevelopment has often erased traces of local memory. Having direct access to residents allowed my methods to become more flexible and participatory. Urban Archaeology began with the discovery that a historic cement road, once celebrated as the city’s first modern street, had been overlaid with decorative stone to make it tourist-friendly. The irony of a history being 'preserved' through its own erasure became the project’s starting point. In response, I invited residents to use simple rubbing techniques to record overlooked textures—footprints, tool marks, and traces embedded in the old cement alleys surrounding the tourist zone—and to reimagine the historical events connected to them. The work offered an alternative narrative to fill the gaps left by official accounts.
City of Collective Ideals emerged from my observations of everyday spatial negotiations among residents, vehicles, and local authorities. The local urban planning often failed to resolve conflicts over public space, prompting residents to develop informal strategies of resistance—such as placing improvised barriers to reclaim communal areas. I translated this dynamic into a participatory city-building game using locally iconic mosaic tiles, much like Monopoly mirrors economic systems through play. Participants adopted roles—mayor, traveller, shop owner, resident—and collaboratively constructed their 'ideal city' through discussion and debate. Some groups reached consensus; others fractured along lines of value and interest, casting travellers and shop owners as 'capitalists' to resist. The process ultimately resulted in a series of mosaic murals, revealing the multiple ideologies that shape contemporary urban imagination.
City of Collective Ideals emerged from my observations of everyday spatial negotiations among residents, vehicles, and local authorities. The local urban planning often failed to resolve conflicts over public space, prompting residents to develop informal strategies of resistance—such as placing improvised barriers to reclaim communal areas. I translated this dynamic into a participatory city-building game using locally iconic mosaic tiles, much like Monopoly mirrors economic systems through play. Participants adopted roles—mayor, traveller, shop owner, resident—and collaboratively constructed their 'ideal city' through discussion and debate. Some groups reached consensus; others fractured along lines of value and interest, casting travellers and shop owners as 'capitalists' to resist. The process ultimately resulted in a series of mosaic murals, revealing the multiple ideologies that shape contemporary urban imagination.
'Urban Archaeology'
Urban Archaeology is a participatory workshop designed and conducted by Sharpay Chenyue Yuan and hosted in Ronggui, Shunde. It combines writing and rubbing practices with the local community.
— In his interview, José mentions: ‘If I always use the same methods and tools for every project, what tends to happen is that I end up creating a brand for myself, rather than responding to the subject.’ With an illustration industry-specific pressure to use the same methods and tools [the problem of ‘style’], what do you think illustrators could do to challenge the constraints of commercially viable/desirable/imposed uniformity of visual strategies?
— I began to question myself while developing participatory methods: as an illustrator, does illustration necessarily have to be made by myself? In traditional illustration practice, authorship is often recognised through visual language—the distinctive style or imagery that defines one’s signature. Yet in a more contemporary context, where illustration can also function as a process of inquiry or research method, authorship shifts from being about stylistic ownership to an ethical and methodological one—concerning how knowledge is produced, mediated, and shared.
As an illustrator, I am aware that my skills and preferred working methods are limited, and I often return to familiar strategies. Rather than perceiving these tendencies as constraints, I understand them as a foundational framework through which new projects can emerge. The recurrence of certain methods—archival research, field visits, and participatory engagement—has gradually revealed a deeper consistency within my practice, which provides me structure to navigate the uncertainties of new sites without losing conceptual direction. However, as José suggests, reapplying methods that once proved effective can sometimes feel ethically misaligned when transplanted into a different context. For me, my challenge lies in how these methods might be adapted and recombined to remain responsive to the specificities of each place and community.
For example, in Lost Springs, Coming Spring, my reportage drawings around New River Head were conceived as a form of archival documentation, an attempt to record the traces of a recent past. In contrast, during my later residency Renewal: a Former Town (both City of Collective Ideals and Urban Archeology are part of it), drawing the Ronggui neighbourhood served a different function—more as a means to initiate dialogue and attract attention from local residents. The role, duration, and weight within the process of the same method can shift significantly. I found that the sequence and proportion of time devoted to each familiar method can transform both the work’s form and its ethical dimension. For me, illustration methods evolve in response to the project’s unfolding realities, rather than being predetermined by aesthetic expectations or institutional conventions.
As an illustrator, I am aware that my skills and preferred working methods are limited, and I often return to familiar strategies. Rather than perceiving these tendencies as constraints, I understand them as a foundational framework through which new projects can emerge. The recurrence of certain methods—archival research, field visits, and participatory engagement—has gradually revealed a deeper consistency within my practice, which provides me structure to navigate the uncertainties of new sites without losing conceptual direction. However, as José suggests, reapplying methods that once proved effective can sometimes feel ethically misaligned when transplanted into a different context. For me, my challenge lies in how these methods might be adapted and recombined to remain responsive to the specificities of each place and community.
For example, in Lost Springs, Coming Spring, my reportage drawings around New River Head were conceived as a form of archival documentation, an attempt to record the traces of a recent past. In contrast, during my later residency Renewal: a Former Town (both City of Collective Ideals and Urban Archeology are part of it), drawing the Ronggui neighbourhood served a different function—more as a means to initiate dialogue and attract attention from local residents. The role, duration, and weight within the process of the same method can shift significantly. I found that the sequence and proportion of time devoted to each familiar method can transform both the work’s form and its ethical dimension. For me, illustration methods evolve in response to the project’s unfolding realities, rather than being predetermined by aesthetic expectations or institutional conventions.
Lost Springs, Coming Spring (2021)
Lost Springs, Coming Spring is an illustration created during the New River Residency at the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration.
Textual records tended to privilege the voices of those in positions of authority, while photographs silently recorded the gestures of workers whose identities were never acknowledged
— In describing ‘Lost Springs, Coming Spring’ you mention that you were paying specific attention to ‘boundaries and elusive spaces’ – could you talk a bit about that, and the ways you negotiated absences in the archive and the actual site?
— One aspect that led me to become particularly sensitive to boundaries and elusive spaces was the specific circumstance of conducting fieldwork during the pandemic. I was permitted only three days of on-site access, and due to safety restrictions, had to remain locked within the premises until the end of each day before I could leave. This enforced isolation profoundly shaped how I perceived the site—its silence, its contained atmosphere, and the sense of both physical and psychological confinement. Another aspect emerged from the proposal stage of the residency at New River Head. Initially, I intended to study the entire area, but I soon realised that the land had been subdivided and much of it had become inaccessible, converted into private property. I recall artistic director of the Quentin Blake Centre, Olivia Ahmad, sharing how she encountered traces of homeless people—makeshift belongings that suggested someone had entered the derelict building through windows, though no one could explain how.
These encounters collectively redirected my attention to what could still be reached: marks, materials, and architectural remnants. I began to engage with traces—surfaces worn by touch, fragments of forgotten infrastructures, and archival documents that bore witness to past labour. Returning to archival methods revealed the partiality of preservation itself: textual records tended to privilege the voices of those in positions of authority, while photographs silently recorded the gestures of workers whose identities were never acknowledged. In certain wartime photographs, the only visible representatives of power appeared masked, their faces obscured.
This process has led me to see boundaries not only as spatial divisions but also as epistemological and political ones—between what is documented and what is excluded, between authorised memory and lived experience. The process has also evident that archive does not simply preserve history—it constructs it through acts of omission. These absences reveal who is granted visibility and who remains invisible, whose labour is remembered and whose is absorbed into the texture of the site itself.
The final work, Lost Springs, Coming Spring, juxtaposes the derelict interiors and exteriors of the present site with archival fragments of workers and anonymised excerpts from decision-makers’ records, the work reconstructs a speculative narrative that allows the site, labour and authority exist equally on one single dimension on canvas. Ultimately, it reflects not only on the physical transformation of a place but also on the politics of remembering—how history, like space, is shaped by its boundaries and the absences they contain.
— One aspect that led me to become particularly sensitive to boundaries and elusive spaces was the specific circumstance of conducting fieldwork during the pandemic. I was permitted only three days of on-site access, and due to safety restrictions, had to remain locked within the premises until the end of each day before I could leave. This enforced isolation profoundly shaped how I perceived the site—its silence, its contained atmosphere, and the sense of both physical and psychological confinement. Another aspect emerged from the proposal stage of the residency at New River Head. Initially, I intended to study the entire area, but I soon realised that the land had been subdivided and much of it had become inaccessible, converted into private property. I recall artistic director of the Quentin Blake Centre, Olivia Ahmad, sharing how she encountered traces of homeless people—makeshift belongings that suggested someone had entered the derelict building through windows, though no one could explain how.
These encounters collectively redirected my attention to what could still be reached: marks, materials, and architectural remnants. I began to engage with traces—surfaces worn by touch, fragments of forgotten infrastructures, and archival documents that bore witness to past labour. Returning to archival methods revealed the partiality of preservation itself: textual records tended to privilege the voices of those in positions of authority, while photographs silently recorded the gestures of workers whose identities were never acknowledged. In certain wartime photographs, the only visible representatives of power appeared masked, their faces obscured.
This process has led me to see boundaries not only as spatial divisions but also as epistemological and political ones—between what is documented and what is excluded, between authorised memory and lived experience. The process has also evident that archive does not simply preserve history—it constructs it through acts of omission. These absences reveal who is granted visibility and who remains invisible, whose labour is remembered and whose is absorbed into the texture of the site itself.
The final work, Lost Springs, Coming Spring, juxtaposes the derelict interiors and exteriors of the present site with archival fragments of workers and anonymised excerpts from decision-makers’ records, the work reconstructs a speculative narrative that allows the site, labour and authority exist equally on one single dimension on canvas. Ultimately, it reflects not only on the physical transformation of a place but also on the politics of remembering—how history, like space, is shaped by its boundaries and the absences they contain.
Lost Springs, Coming Spring (2021)
I find it difficult to centre my own presence or to confront political realities in an overtly activist sense. Instead, I turn toward the community or the past, allowing collective narratives to speak in ways that remain open, plural, and ambivalent.
— Would you say working with other people and their histories changed your understanding of your own identity and sense of selfhood? How, if so?
— Exploring histories, whether with or within communities, often begins with my own questions of belonging and dislocation. Through the process, I tend to uncover unexpected connections or shared sensibilities, not only between the past and the present, or between history and community, but also between these relationships and my own motivations. These moments of recognition are never the goal, yet they inevitably shape how I understand myself in relation to others. The search for resonance—between my own experiences and the narratives I encounter—thus becomes both a creative and an ethical act.
I realise that my engagement with others’ stories is, to some extent, a mirror of my own concerns. The impulse to borrow from the past to reflect on the present, or to speak of another as a way of hinting at myself, feels deeply rooted in a Confucian way of thinking—one that grounds my heritage and shapes my understanding of relational identity. My recurring methods—returning to archives and histories, and engaging with voices that resist official narratives—reflect not only personal inquiry but also a collective consciousness of where I come from. This position also complicates how I situate myself within my work: I find it difficult to centre my own presence or to confront political realities in an overtly activist sense. Instead, I turn toward the community or the past, allowing collective narratives to speak in ways that remain open, plural, and ambivalent.
— Exploring histories, whether with or within communities, often begins with my own questions of belonging and dislocation. Through the process, I tend to uncover unexpected connections or shared sensibilities, not only between the past and the present, or between history and community, but also between these relationships and my own motivations. These moments of recognition are never the goal, yet they inevitably shape how I understand myself in relation to others. The search for resonance—between my own experiences and the narratives I encounter—thus becomes both a creative and an ethical act.
I realise that my engagement with others’ stories is, to some extent, a mirror of my own concerns. The impulse to borrow from the past to reflect on the present, or to speak of another as a way of hinting at myself, feels deeply rooted in a Confucian way of thinking—one that grounds my heritage and shapes my understanding of relational identity. My recurring methods—returning to archives and histories, and engaging with voices that resist official narratives—reflect not only personal inquiry but also a collective consciousness of where I come from. This position also complicates how I situate myself within my work: I find it difficult to centre my own presence or to confront political realities in an overtly activist sense. Instead, I turn toward the community or the past, allowing collective narratives to speak in ways that remain open, plural, and ambivalent.
City of Collective Ideals (2024)
In this participatory workshop, City of Collective Ideals, participants were invited to explore creativity and social dynamics by envisioning a shared urban space.
— What would be your key takeaways for your own practice from the interviews with Serena and José?
— Both of them emphasised the importance of slowing down in their practice—of allowing a project to unfold at its own pace rather than being driven by predetermined concepts or institutional expectations, giving space for experience to transform into memory, and for genuine encounters with people and places to inform the direction of the work. Most of my recent projects have begun with theoretical frameworks that help to secure institutional support or articulate a research rationale. Yet spending time with communities has repeatedly reminded me how distant these frameworks can be from lived realities. As José reflected on the necessity of building connections that take time and may never become visible in the final outcome, and as Serena described allowing her embodied practice to settle into memory before responding to it, I began to see time itself as a medium of connection, self-awareness, and ethical responsiveness. It allows the work to evolve through experience rather than projection—through encounter rather than concept.
Their reflections also prompted me to reconsider those aspects of practice that cannot, and perhaps should not, be resolved or captured. Translation and distortion may reveal another kind of truth: moments of ambiguity or misalignment often expose layers of reality that fixed or overly coherent interpretations obscure. I often find myself anxious about whether I have been close enough to the 'truth' when representing social histories—an anxiety rooted in the expectation that illustration should render clarity or authority. Yet, as José’s approach of amplifying the voices speak from the people themselves, and as Serena’s conscious positioning of her perspective as only one among many demonstrate, authenticity does not stem from accuracy but from transparency and humility.
Their reflections also prompted me to reconsider those aspects of practice that cannot, and perhaps should not, be resolved or captured. Translation and distortion may reveal another kind of truth: moments of ambiguity or misalignment often expose layers of reality that fixed or overly coherent interpretations obscure. I often find myself anxious about whether I have been close enough to the 'truth' when representing social histories—an anxiety rooted in the expectation that illustration should render clarity or authority. Yet, as José’s approach of amplifying the voices speak from the people themselves, and as Serena’s conscious positioning of her perspective as only one among many demonstrate, authenticity does not stem from accuracy but from transparency and humility.