Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Suzie (siyi) Liu. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Suzie (Siyi), appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
In my mind, there is almost a dynamic, entangled web of everything in my life connecting. The kind of narrative art work I do is interdisciplinary by nature, so I think assimilating different voices and encountering unfamiliar scenarios is essential for stimulating powerful story-telling.
A diverse range of conversations keeps my mind active. Constant communication with my peers and instructors is a way of being resourceful because there is an incredible amount I can learn from everyone’s design practice. As close friends, they have so much potential to make meaningful impacts on my belief system.
I also realize the necessity to step out of the comfort zone frequently, into domains where knowledge or creativity takes drastically different forms than mine. I enjoy being exposed to philosophy, physics theories, oral histories, culinary practices… A lot of the time, I do not discover how they inspire my creativity until much, much later, but when the moment hits, it feels extremely rewarding. The crucial step for me is to always stay connected to them and keep having internal “conversations” with myself – what ideas in the book/movie do I resonate with, and what do I disagree with? In this process I expand my mental web, carefully considering how external ideas help to construct my own. The introspection is even more effective when I articulate them by writing things down or chatting with others about it. Having this interview is actually a precious opportunity to reflect on myself!
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Professionally, I am pursuing a career in digital product design, for which I gained practical experience in the renewable energy industry and building performance evaluation. The opportunity to bridge gaps between the digital and the physical worlds excites me, and it matches perfectly with my education background – I am juggling double majors in Human-Computer Interaction and Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University.
In academia, on the other hand, I see myself as a narrative artist who values interdisciplinary practice and bold experimentation. Coming from architecture school, I like to use place-making as a vehicle for storytelling, and I am always itching to test out unconventional mediums and technologies – from handcraft model making, to analog photography, and to AI-generated images.
Among all my explorations, the idea that past, present and future coexist is especially intriguing to me. Many of my works can perhaps be read as time-based fictions, in which speculations involve a range of sociocultural forces across time scales, driven by critical reflections on history, identity, and politics, recognizing the significance of individual emotions and memories. Currently I am working on my thesis, which explores the idea of time-travel and timelessness. This May, the thesis exhibition will be open in Pittsburgh, PA. Nervous and excited!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
A mindset that constantly encourages me to be bolder with creative work is to consider every project as an ongoing process. As artists and designers, we are prone to losing confidence when project outcomes do not meet all our expectations. I like to remind myself that unfinished work is not bad work. As long as the project makes an impact – be it raising an important question among the audience, or revealing a strength or weakness of mine that I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise – it is invaluable, and more often than not, even more interesting than highly polished work. Finding our own practice is a life-long experimentation, and I myself, like many young artists and designers, are just at the beginning of it!
Another quality I’ve been training myself on is to hold back on judgment, and it applies particularly to viewing the creative work of others. The boundary of architecture discipline is becoming more and more fluid, and we as the new generation of architects should enjoy the liberty to form different versions of interpretation. Respecting others’ creative beliefs, hearing out their motivation, and appreciating controversy is key to creating an open-minded, dynamic environment which we all can in turn benefit from.
Related to that, I also think there is so much power in being candid, both in terms of external communication and with ourselves. Ultimately all creative work is rooted in our personal experience, and the uniqueness and limitations in our perspectives inevitably become part of our creative process, which I try to acknowledge. Honesty might mean being more vulnerable. Exposing our authentic selves can sound scary, but when we do it with people we trust, that is often where empathy and deep interpersonal connections start to grow. It often helps me reconcile with myself both as an artist and as an individual.
What would you advise – going all in on your strengths or investing on areas where you aren’t as strong to be more well-rounded?
Given that I value interdisciplinary thinking, I always find it healthy to dabble into different areas, which might include ones I am not strong in. My purpose of doing that might not necessarily be to master them; I often do it for future moments of discovery on what these experiences bring to my focus area, which is my creativity.
Challenging oneself and overcoming difficulties can be a source of motivation for some people, and in that case they should certainly go for it. For artists and designers, I think we all share the goal of shaping our personal practice, which many other involvements in our life revolve around. At least this is my case for the time being: nothing motivates me more than my creative “obsession”, and I would go out of my way to have things work out for it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://suziesiyiliu.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/junk_by_su/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzieliu/
Image Credits
lenz.fotos
Yichen Pan
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