Olivia Zheng is an emerging artist, designer and student at the Maryland Institute College of Art, majoring in both Architectural Design and Fiber. Olivia’s work centers on the exploration of self-identity and the embrace of differences through Natural Dyeing, Weaving, and Sewing. She brings a unique blend of cultural influences and academic background to her artistic practices. As a designer, Olivia has contributed to many renovation projects for vacant lots and buildings in Baltimore City. In her designs, she combines the form of textiles with the structure of architecture to develop substantial designs centered on user experience.

Nikki Zhao (b. 2002, China) is an artist who focuses on works about people and everything related to our lives; her major art-making form is digital illustration, while also striving to explore and incorporate a wide range of three-dimensional materials in her works. Zhao is interested in creating artworks of people/characters and their stories, exploring and revealing the potential and versatility within us.

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Collection Notes

The title of our collection is Collide, Reform; it introduces the idea of how growth and improvement often accompanies pain and breakdown. Some keywords of our collection are growth, collision, chaos, reformation and evolution. Our collection embraces the differences of individuals and explores the possibilities of growth when it can be painful and challenging, but the pain and struggles are often necessary and unavoidable in the path of evolution. We believe that everyone is uniquely different and our differences create edges, edges cause collision, collision causes the outburst of sweet chaos; leading to a reformation that signifies an UPTURN in the course of life and civilization. We want to reveal and highlight the essence of UPTURN, by capturing every stage of our growth and struggles.