The Grand Tour · 2026 China Academy of Art (CAA) Graduation Season has come to a successful close. Graduates from 20 academic units responded to the times with art and explored the future through creativity, unfolding a youthful narrative of ideals, journeys, and growth across the city and campus, transforming Hangzhou into an open art venue that gathers intellectual power, creativity, and action.

The China Academy of Art is proud to launch the "Youth Insights" series, which continues to focus on topics such as avant-garde practice, humanities and technology, rural academies, A better China, rooted construction, people-centered, poetic cinema, visual sinology, Eastern design, and overseas insights. The series closely follows how young creators measure the world with their footsteps and respond to the times with their works. Between every departure and arrival, we jointly witness the grand explorations and boundless possibilities of a new generation of artists.

When the digital tide intermingles with the warmth of the handmade, and when Eastern civilization redefines its own coordinates in global dialogue, young creators have long since transcended the boundaries of function and object, regarding design as the flow of aesthetic will and the extension of life's ideals. Rooted in a century of Sino-foreign mutual learning, they delve deep into the soil of geo-cultural identity, echoing the China Academy of Art's Eastern design philosophy of "pluralistic interaction and harmony without uniformity." Carrying forward the wisdom of their forebears, they reshape a Eastern foundation for contemporary design—one that nurtures both body and soul.

IN BETWEEN ELEVATOR

Zhang Yixiao, Hu Zongting, Quan Yongjie

College: School of Visual Communication

Instructors: Wu Weichen, Zhou Feng, Lu Xi

Category: Visual Communication Design (400cm x400cm x240cm)

IN BETWEEN ELEVATOR treats the elevator as an intensely condensed social theater. From the perspectives of natural history and anthropology, it opens up this everyday perceptual blind spot, exploring how vertical space shapes perception, psychology, and interaction. The exhibition unfolds across four dimensions—structure, time, body, and sound: it visualizes the structural order of elevators, tracing the evolution from class differentiation to superficial equality; it analyzes how time and social relations govern positioning, gaze, silence, and distance; and it translates sound into musical scores, revealing the underlying logic of riding behavior. The work invites viewers to re-perceive the elevator not merely as a means of transport, but as a space that can be imbued with warmth and human connection. It is both a critical reflection on "how coexistence is possible" and a re-imagination of the dynamic relationship between space and action.

Mentor's Message

This work focuses on the everyday elevator space, closely following the trend in visual communication from information transmission toward cognitive construction. Its creative logic is coherent, advancing step by step from observation and induction to visual coding and narrative expression, transforming implicit spatial order and behavioral patterns into visual language. By delving into the social connotations behind the mundane from a micro perspective, it translates individual experience into public discourse, fully demonstrating the contemporary value of visual design in engaging with reality and constructing meaning.

Zhang Yixiao

Graduated from the Department of Visual Communication Design, School of Visual Communication, China Academy of Art, with systematic training in brand strategy development and Eastern visual language. In this work, she took the lead in building the overall visual system, coordinating color matching, layout composition, graphic visual element design, and material visual presentation. She oversaw the consistency of style, aesthetic quality, and detailed execution across the entire series, and was responsible for the optimization and finalization of static visual images, establishing the overall visual order and artistic tone of the work.

Hu Zongting

Graduated from the Department of Visual Communication Design, School of Visual Communication, China Academy of Art, with a focus on brand strategy. In this work, she directed the spatial design component, concentrating on the overall framework of the thematic space. She was responsible for spatial layout planning, scene scale setting, and the logic of spatial structure. Integrating the core concepts of the work, she designed and refined spatial atmosphere and scene morphology, balancing functionality and ambiance, and constructing the complete spatial narrative system of the project.

Quan Yongjie

Graduated from the Department of Visual Communication Design, School of Visual Communication, China Academy of Art, with systematic training in brand strategy development and Eastern visual language. In this work, she took charge of the motion design section. She coordinated the overall motion effects, camera language, visual rhythm, and motion translation design across the entire piece, and was responsible for animating static visuals, debugging animation smoothness, and ensuring the continuity of dynamic narrative. Through dynamic visual interpretation, she empowered the content of the work and refined its audio-visual and motion expression.