“Beauty carries the promise
                            which can make this mortal and limited world preferable to 
                                        and more appealing than any other.”
 
                                                                                          Camus, Albert. (1956)





Mengrui(Grei) Wang
                Portfolio, 2024


                                                                                                                  Photo by Grei in Project INTRO-SENTIENT
Hi!!! I am Grei
China London
Grei is a recent graduate of MA in graphic design communication at the University of the Arts London, where her studies in the visual arts have given her an understanding of creative design and community, as well as the software skills which enable she to work efficiently and independently.


She is keen to develop core skills within the art publishing industry, whilst also further developing her artistic practice.
She is also a digital design enthusiast with an undeniable passion for user experience and creating unique digital design styles.


                                                                                                  2024
                                                                                          Stroll Press
                                                    44 7536 256166
  mr29f5@outlook.com






01.    Flâneur - object

Flâneur is a French word meaning a person who stroll or wander. Flaneurs were the first and foremost casual observer of urban life. They were people who travelled through the city, watching but did not participating in what they saw. Although they were observers and early ramblers who retained and valued their own sense of individuality and identity, many exhibited a flamboyant style of self-presentation.


What is the object you use in your daily life that represents yourself?

Life can be told in objects, which may be common and unrefined, but strangely affect the minutiae of life. This connection represents a reflection and thinking on oneself through an object. In this project, you will use objects as a language to compile a lexicon for interpreting the ideas within yourself.






02.    Flâneur- space

Flâneur is a French word meaning a person who stroll or wander. Flaneurs were the first and foremost casual observer of urban life. They were people who travelled through the city, watching but did not participating in what they saw. Although they were observers and early ramblers who retained and valued their own sense of individuality and identity, many exhibited a flamboyant style of self-presentation.


Exploring your own meaning in the space.

The purposes of space are very diverse. Not only for sleeping, eating, working, interacting with people but also it really can be any space you want to be in. It could be a beach where the waves are lapping, a quiet wood, a frequented coffee shop, a towering city building, a remembered home. It could be a space that even doesn’t exist, a ‘habitat’ of your own creation, a dreamscape to remember.
In the contemporary world where is messed, we want you to stroll this space that appeals to your soul to feel yourself and inspiring whether actual or fictional. This SAPCE can express your inner experience.


03.   Wayve of Life

'Wave of Life' to explore the group who live on the boathouse and reproduce their lives and spiritual reflections through poetry. It allows us to understand different lifestyles and to think about the choice of lifestyle that truly meets our inner desires. In this process of introspection, it is a challenge to self-knowledge and inner values, which may lead to a series of philosophical reflections on the self, society, and culture: the quest for authenticity, inner fulfillment, and a more self-conscious and chosen life.


I want to use poetry to reproduce the life and spiritual thinking of this group of people living on the houseboat. They are more like roamers exploring the city life through their continuous routes. In the so-called social route, they chose another way to understand the trajectory of the world development. This also allows them to distinguish themselves from the unity in the general environment to achieve self-reaching.



04.    Intro- sentient

This work leads us to think about the relationship between nature and mankind, and through that to understand that we have deep feelings and perceptions of the nature around and within us. It is a matter of being that is introspective and intimate.



When we try to understand the great wisdom of nature, we can get stuck in a rut. And when we confront nature, our role extends. We play the role of intermediary; nature itself is a symbiosis in its many forms, and humans are part of this dynamic interdependence. The regular shape of the board, the right-angled turns and the absolute whiteness of the colour of the board is an impossible presence in the natural ecology. But when it appears in the forest, it serves as a vehicle for recording and analysing the changes in everything by means of the sun's rays projected onto the panel. Nature itself operates in many forms of symbiotic relationships, and humans are part of this dynamic interdependence.



05.    Tree Monologue

I look for the trees that do not exist in the forest and stand alone. In this process, imagine that society is like a forest and the trees are like us as human beings. Each individual is using the energy of ontology and trying to emit a faint light into the group. But we gradually forget that we are also an individual, just like the tree, who is lonely but free, nihilistic but romantic. To grow wildly, not to recognise ourselves only through the reflection in the eyes of others. I communicate with those who sit alone under the tree to compose a beautiful poem together, in the process allowing them to be the intermediary between me and the tree, and then allowing me to be this transmitter to my audience. 


In the delivery of the poem, I hope to build a mood of longing for the self, and I hope that I, and the reader, will begin to think about my relationship with society. To measure the relationship between the pros and cons of everything within the natural social structure centred on man, and the development of individual destinies mixed in with this change, which in turn seems to escape the definitive collective consciousness, while the underlying feelings that abound are incredibly fiery and particular. I try to make these trees reframe each of us individually. I hope to 'escape' the existence of the group as this tree does, to explore the process and to start from within, to nurture myself again.



06.    WHAT (  ) IS A FRAMEWORK

This project was a group collaborative project that physically fell into place. We designed the visual identity for the final symposium of the second semester of the graphic design programme at ual camberwell campus.


The symposium was about students designing their own framework based on understanding and research, and after our group had communicated with other groups, we realised that everyone was so confused about the true meaning of 'framework' from the beginning to the final presentation of the project. So we converted this confusion into a short question title to attract the audience's attention, at the same time, we want to showing the weakness of the brief indirectly.  
The main graphic elements were extracted from the final presentation and content of the students' projects. Simple elements combined with powerful questions resulted in a series of posters and zines.
(re-edit)



07.    ROOTS

This project design an visual identify about reggae music in Brixton for local people and who interested in reggae music. The identity will communicate through rhythmic words and images to express the joy of reggae music.


Brixton is the main area of early black culture, and reggae music has also become the dominant music style in this area. In the process of slow development, the integration of diverse cultures has made Brixton's reggae music have a multi-faceted development, and the culture of this community has also changed. I wants to lead the audience to understand Brixton music under the changing times through this visual identity.