Hi, I'm Zhiyuan Li, an animation student entering my second year. Before coming to OCAD, I worked as a magazine editor for seven years. Before that, I studied computer science. None of it was according to plan, but I'm happy with how it turned out.
I'm interested in many things. I write about movies and pop culture, make videos and games, draw comics and create animation. Recently, my work has become increasingly humorous, using comedy to explore everyday experiences and larger ideas. I'm still new to making art, and I hope my work brings something fresh to the world.
Nuclear Me (4 photographies)
Digital photography, 14 x 20 in, 2026
In this photography series, I Photoshop myself into all kinds of nuclear-related scenes as a way of confronting the dark cloud hanging over our heads. I love Resident Evil, Fallout, and Silo. At the same time, everything happening in the world has made an actual nuclear war not that unimaginable.
I looked up Toronto on NUKEMAP to see what'll happen if a nuke was detonated here (the whole downtown will be gone for sure). I also found myself reading about the luxurious survival condo built in a missile silo in US.
In the end, I know there's nothing I can do about catastrophes like that. The only rational response is to cherish the ordinary yet wonderful life we have.
Rice & Bread
Digital, 11 x 17 in, 2025
Don't laugh, but even though I've heard about the praise of Chinese food all my life, I never truly appreciated it when I was living in China. During my first few months in Toronto, one of the main themes of my life is trying to recreate the food I had back home as much as possible (affordably!)—even though I hadn't cooked in two years.
It's like how you can only understand your mother tongue more deeply after learning another language—you can only see a place as a whole once you've left it. In this comic, I look back at my relationship with two staple foods (and the people connected to them) throughout my life. Sometimes I preferred one over the other; sometimes I discovered things I had never even thought about before. In the end, I realized I can't live without either, and there are so many more staple foods in the world for us to try.