︎ welcome! this site is interactive, drag the images to reveal more text
Flying Flat, Annie Wang
Annie Wang is an Australia-born Chinese Canadian artist specialized in visualizations through illustrations, paintings, and collages. Whether on digital or physical mediums, Annie strives to bring to life abstract ponderings, layered emotions, and fleeting instincts through her work. She currently works as a spatial designer and concept artist at MASS Design Group, a non-profit architecture firm, and as the Creative Director of Isochron, a Toronto-based jewelry label.
I learned of the Lying Flat movement earlier this year. At the time, I was reaching the peak of life anxiety — this increasing fear that things may never get better, that I’d never have the wealth or time to be a mother, that I’d never have my own home, that quality of life and mother nature were intertwined in a downward spiral…I knew it was a generational feeling, but I wasn’t sure how global it was until I learned about this movement in China. While my parents’ generation were busy feuding between East and West, I suddenly felt a shared sentiment with my peers on the other side of the world. Moreover, I saw it as a sign of strength, a signal to agency, and a type of civil disobedience I could culturally relate to. The title, Flying Flat, refers to a favourite Miyazaki film of mine, Kiki’s Delivery Service. You can see a sliver of Kiki lying flat in the centre of the collage. In the foreword, Miyazaki says this: “In today’s society...where anyone can earn money going from one temporary job to another, there is no connection between financial independence and spiritual independence. In this era, poverty is not so much material as spiritual.”