Yilan is a performance artist

After moving from her hometown Lanzhou to Shanghai when she was 14, Yilan experienced culture shock that transformed her. The lifestyle was so unfamiliar she found she couldn’t fit in or understand the local dialect of her classmates. “It definitely changed my personality,” she says. 

Yilan became more shy and spent much of her time in high school alone. She retreated to the school’s studio where she read books and honed her interest in art. It was an interest she hid from her parents—until her poor grades were reported to them. When pressed, Yilan revealed that she spent more time drawing than paying attention in class. “Luckily my parents were really open minded,” she says.

The conversation unlocked the opportunity to focus on art. “That took that pressure out and gave me more creative freedom to prepare my application sketchbook,” Yilan says. 

With support from her parents, Yilan continued her studies, pursuing a Bachelor and Master degree in communication design and illustration. “I always liked drawing, but I'm the only one in my whole family to start studying art,” she says.

‍“I'm surprised how tattoos can change people's personalities completely.”

It was in university that Yilan began to examine themes that would eventually influence her career in tattooing. “I have vitiligo,” she says. “My eyelashes, eyebrows, and the skin around my eyes are just naturally white.” A professor promoted Yilan to explore her condition as part of her work. 

“There is not really much research on skin conditions and wellbeing,” says Yilan, “and I am interested in how to use art to help people” She discovered the power of tattoos to transform a person’s image of themselves, and was drawn to the intimacy of the craft. “I'm surprised how tattoos can change people's personalities completely,” she says.

As an introvert, Yilan saw a career in tattoos as a way to come out of her shell and explore the human side of art. “In the beginning the main purpose for me was using tattoos like a tool to have more conversations,” she says.

While Yilan’s parents did support her art path, at first tattooing gave them pause. “They still have a negative assumption about tattoos,” she says. But it was one particular story that helped her mother understand. A client asked Yilan to design a tattoo to help her deal with her painful decision to have an abortion. “My mom was quite touched,” she says. 

Since then, Yilan’s parents have been behind her decision, and her mom even asked her daughter to tattoo her. “I was crying,” she says. “I was like, ‘this is love.’” 

‍"When people share feelings, it changes my perspective and that helps me a lot when I'm doing the design.”

Now based in the UK, Yilan sees tattooing as a mashup of performance art and therapy. “Clients start sharing intimate and personal memories and stories immediately,” she says. 

It’s part of the job that appeals to Yilan’s sensitive nature—and helps her do better work. “I think it's easy for me to build connections with people,” she says. “When people share feelings, it changes my perspective and that helps me a lot when I'm doing the design.”

Color plays heavily into how Yilan transforms a customer’s vision into a design. “If people say, ‘Oh, I'm quite moody,’ immediately we think of blue or black or gray. But why can't red represent them?” she asks. That’s why she leans into a spectrum of colors in her work, rather than just an accent—to reflect the nuance of emotions. “It's okay for you to have all kinds of different feelings,” she says. “We're human.” 

Yilan is still exploring the connection between art and mental health both through her tattoo work and volunteer work with autism and vitiligo organizations. In her next act, she hopes to study art therapy. “I think art can definitely be more meaningful than just putting it on the wall for people to see,” she says.

For now, Yilan loves the control tattooing gives her over her own body, her art, and her story. “I see my body like a sketchbook,” she says. “Each tattoo I put it on represents part of my journey.”