UWC Changshu China · Portfolio 2026

王悠然 Youran “Iris” Wang

I make images, spaces, and objects that ask people to look at what they have learned to look past.

Comics & Photography Stage Design Design & Making Field Research
Portrait of Youran Wang

Wenzhou, Zhejiang → UWC Changshu China

Scroll
Artist’s Statement

自述Looking at What Gets Looked Past

“I am a maker who searches for faint light in the folds of ordinary life — using a camera to listen to what wrinkles whisper, using a stage to collect the choreography of fingertips, letting the voiceless be seen.”
— from my 2026 artist statement

My work keeps returning to the same question: what have we all agreed to stop noticing? A comic about the insects that no longer hit a windshield. A photograph of a forest after fire. A shared box of period products in a school hallway, restocked quietly because nobody wanted to ask. I am drawn to the thing sitting in plain view that everyone has trained themselves to walk past.

In 2026 three of those pieces — a comic, a photograph, and a poster — were recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. They look nothing alike, and that is the point: I choose the medium the question needs, not the one I am most comfortable in.

The other half of my practice happens behind the audience’s eyeline. As lead set designer for my school’s drama society, I build the world a story happens inside — a gothic altar for Corpse Bride, a scale model box for a professional production in Shanghai. Design taught me that a room can argue. Before an actor says a word, the space has already told the audience what kind of world they are in, and I want to keep learning how to write with that.

Lately I have been pulling a third thread through both: technology as a material, not a tool. I build things by vibe coding — describing what I want to an AI, then iterating against what actually appears on screen, which feels much more like working in a studio than like traditional programming. My research in Guizhou ended up proposing AI-generated Miao embroidery patterns and AR cultural scenes to help teenagers there see their own heritage as a skill worth having. This site is the same experiment: I designed and built it this way, and I made every editorial call about what belongs on it.

I know where I am still thin. My grasp of visual technology is narrower than my ambitions for it, and I am working on that deliberately rather than hoping it resolves itself. What I am certain of is why I make anything at all: creation is one small light waking another.

3 2026 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards — comic, photograph, poster
2 Productions designed in Grade 11, one at a professional Shanghai theatre
20+ Volunteers led teaching gender education in local primary schools
5 Original design and research projects, from a fridge to a fieldwork paper
The Studio

画室Images That Argue

Photography, illustration, and comic art — roughly three hours a week since Grade 9, circling themes of growth, identity, and the things a society quietly agrees not to see. In 2026 three pieces were recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the century-old American competition whose past teenage entrants include Andy Warhol, Sylvia Plath, and Amanda Gorman.

Also from the Studio

Abstract magenta and yellow poster design with the Chinese character for cocoon1 / 2
茧 CocoonPoster design, two studies
Collage design featuring a face fragmented by phone screens and red rectangles
Untitled (Screens)Digital collage, cover design
Illustrated sheep mascot character wearing a jester's cap1 / 4
Scintillate MascotCharacter design & sticker set
The Stage

舞台Building the Room the Story Happens In

I grew up performing, and somewhere around Grade 10 I moved permanently behind the proscenium. As a core member and lead set designer of Theaomai, UWC Changshu’s drama society, I help build the physical world of each production — and I helped grow the club to twenty-five members while doing it.

Lead Set Designer Gothic wedding altar set piece built for the production Corpse Bride, lit in purple with falling paper butterflies
2025 · Grade 10

僵尸新娘Corpse Bride

Theaomai Drama Society · UWC Changshu China

My first production leading design end to end. The rose-covered gothic altar started as an iPad sketch worked out cue by cue, became foam board, wire, silk flowers, and a great deal of hand-painted texture on a workshop floor, and ended up as the thing the whole second act happens around. I learned more from the gap between the drawing and the built object than from either one alone.

✦ Designed, built, and installed — sketch through strike

Click through for the build: design sketch, workshop, finished set, cast.

📜 Read the script by Alice Li, Kristen Wang & Sarah Mohammed · PDF
Core Member & Set Design Ensemble in blue light on the set of Dead Poets Society, seated in a circle of chairs
2025 · Grade 11

Dead Poets Society

Theaomai Drama Society · UWC Changshu China

Our adaptation of Tom Schulman’s play, staged with a moodboard wall of torn photographs standing in for memory and a blue wash that turned the whole cast into silhouettes for the closing scene. I helped build that wall and ran through the design alongside the rest of the ensemble — the club had grown from a handful of us to twenty-five members by this point, and it showed in how many hands were on the build.

✦ Snow and paper-scatter effects · moodboard set piece

Click through: set detail, ensemble, curtain call.

Co-Designer & Cast Red-lit stage during the production What Does Animal Say at Shanghai YOUNG Theatre
2025 · Grade 10 summer

动物学校WHAT DOES ANIMAL SAY?

Birdie Summer Camp · Shanghai YOUNG Theatre, Bird Hatching Season

A four-week ensemble intensive with Birdie, a theatre-education company run by overseas-trained professionals, capped by nine other young creators and me devising and staging an original piece about the privilege that comes from where you are born and about workplace sexual harassment — a theme several of us on the team turned out to share real experience of. I sat in every script discussion and rehearsal, played a capybara, co-designed the final stage scenery, built the production’s first set model box, and helped run publicity. It opened to a paying public audience — the first time my design work shared a building with a real box office.

✦ Selected for a 10-person ensemble · set model box · poster · cast 📜 Read the devised script ensemble-written, Birdie Theatre · PDF
Character Design Ensemble seated at school desks in a dim stage lit scene from the original drama
2025 · Grade 10

谁逼死了天使Who Killed the Angel

Creative Writing A3 · year-end original drama

A piece our Creative Writing class devised together about school bullying and collective blame — one classmate wrote the first draft, and the rest of us built it further through rehearsal and rewrites. My own contribution was the character design: a full set of costume boards, each built around a reference image with fabric, colour, and damage annotated by hand, so that what an audience saw on each body told part of the story before anyone spoke. The production won Most Touching Scene and the Most Popular Award at the year-end showcase.

✦ Most Touching Scene · Most Popular Award — year-end showcase

Click through: costume boards, staging, poster.

Watch the video
Grades 10–12

The wider Theaomai repertoire

Acting and designing across classical and adapted work, performed both on campus and outside it, while the society grew from a small group to twenty-five members.

Grade 10

Creative Writing Program

A semester studying storytelling fundamentals across plays, personal essays, and short fiction — the coursework that fed directly into Who Killed the Angel, above.

Grades 11–12

Research: the theatre industry

An ongoing 4,000-word paper on how commercial theatre actually runs — production economics, audience psychology, brand marketing, and the commercial application of stage design.

Making

造物Objects, Machines, and Code

A running habit of building the thing rather than only proposing it. Some of these started as coursework and some started as an annoyance nobody was fixing, and lately they have started to include software — I build by vibe coding, describing what I want and then iterating against what appears, which feels far closer to studio practice than to engineering.

A handmade portable fridge with a hand-painted yellow-green shell 1 / 8
Physics coursework · built

Three-Source Dorm Fridge

A working portable refrigerator from foam board, tin foil, a motor, and a Peltier cooling plate — switchable between three power sources: 220V mains, a 12V battery, and a solar panel. The shell is hand-drawn, because a thing you built should not have to look like a lab result.

Design proposal board for reusable cups made from coffee grounds and hemp fibre
Sustainable product design

A Cup Made of Coffee

A proposal to replace single-use cups with two reusable alternatives — one pressed from spent coffee grounds, one from hemp fibre — argued on the boring, decisive grounds that actually matter: safety, durability, cleaning, cost, and what really happens to a “degradable” cup after you throw it away.

Watch the project video
Campaign poster for the Shared Period Box, reading For Every Flower In Growth 1 / 6
UWC Design Thinking · installed

The Shared Period Box

A free, restocked box of period products placed where people actually need one, built after noticing how many were quietly going without rather than asking. Small, unglamorous, and used constantly.

★ KUNCHENG SPARK Award
Presenting the SIGNNOPOLY board game at an exhibition booth 1 / 15
Game design · full marks

SIGNNOPOLY: a Board Game for Sign Language

A Monopoly-style tabletop game that teaches beginners basic Chinese Sign Language by playing rather than drilling — illustrated, written, and playtested with a team after teaching sign language to volunteers and watching where new learners actually stall.

A homemade 3D laser engraving machine frame, assembled from salvaged parts 1 / 5
Fabrication

3D Laser Engraving Machine

Designed and assembled from parts, mostly to find out whether I could — and to have a tool that turns a drawing into a physical surface without going through anyone else’s workshop.

Ongoing

Vibe Coding & This Site

I have been learning to build software the way I build a set: describe the intention, look hard at what comes back, and revise. This portfolio is one result — designed and built that way, with every decision about what belongs on it made by me. Next I want to push into AI- and AR-driven work, an idea my Guizhou fieldwork already pointed at.

Field Notes

田野Questions Worth Sitting With

Four studies, four very different rooms: survey data on fandom and identity, a resettled village in the mountains of Guizhou, a square-dancing circle of grandmothers in Changshu, a classroom of ten-year-olds learning the word “boundary” for the first time. What holds them together is a refusal to theorize from a desk when the people the theory is about are reachable by train.

为爱发电Generating Love: Talent-Show Consumption & Youth Identity

National High Distinction China Thinks Big Global Research & Innovation Conference · Grade 11

Do fans who spend money supporting an idol on a talent show end up with a steadier sense of who they are than fans who only watch? Splitting respondents into non-viewers, viewers, and viewer-consumers, this study paired a 119-respondent survey with structured interviews, then analyzed the results across three dimensions of identity: self-concept clarity, sense of belonging, and emotional energy.

The finding cut against the easy assumption that fan spending is simply impulsive: viewers who never spent scored lowest of all three groups on every measure — lower even than people who do not watch these shows at all. Moderate, reflective consumption tracked instead with a clearer, steadier sense of self. The paper reads fan spending as identity commitment rather than impulse, following Erikson’s exploration–commitment model of adolescent identity.

MethodMixed methods — 119-respondent survey + structured interviews, ANOVA, three-stage grounded-theory coding
FrameworkErikson’s identity theory · Tajfel’s social identity theory · Belk’s extended self
ResultNational Conference High Distinction, Social Behavior & Economics · invited to the Global Conference
Award ceremony on stage at the CTB conference Presenting research at the CTB national conference CTB Global Conference invitation certificate CTB National Conference High Distinction certificate

南溪苑田野调查What Comes After Resettlement: Nanxiyuan, Guizhou

Original Fieldwork Guiyang, Guizhou · August 2025

China’s poverty-relocation program has moved more than 9.6 million people out of mountain regions since 2015. Nanxiyuan, outside Guiyang, resettled 1,060 residents from seven mountain townships in 2019. The easier part of that story is already told — clean housing, a 97.24% employment rate, a community clinic where there had been none. This study went looking for the harder question: what happens to a resettled community as government subsidies taper and it has to learn to generate its own momentum.

On-site interviews with a sanitation worker, a rattan-weaving workshop owner, a community-committee deputy, two schoolchildren, and the social workers running the after-school program built a picture of a settlement in its harder, “soft” transition — from hardware to opportunity, culture, and a generation of teenagers deciding whether to stay. The study closes by proposing that the community’s Miao and Buyi heritage — embroidery, dance, textile craft — be folded into paid digital-content training for local teenagers, including AI-generated pattern work and AR cultural scenes: turning cultural identity into a marketable skill instead of something school quietly discourages.

MethodOn-site interviews with residents, officials, business owners & social workers, plus photographic documentation
Scope290 households · 1,060 residents resettled from seven townships
FocusLivelihood transition, education access, culture-based youth programming
Entrance to the Nanxiyuan resettlement community, storefronts along the street Family service centre signage in Nanxiyuan Wall display of household registration data for the resettled community Rattan-weaving workshop employing residents of Nanxiyuan Community meeting with residents and social workers Interview session at the Children's Home after-school program Students working at a table inside the Children's Home Group photo with children and families at Nanxiyuan

广场舞与情绪Square Dancing & the Emotional Ledger of Growing Older

Quantitative Field Study Fangta Garden, Changshu

Twenty-eight women at Changshu’s Fangta Garden, screened for health and residency, sorted by how many weekly sessions of group square-dancing they attended. A five-item happiness scale, short semi-structured interviews, and a regression analysis found a clean climb — from an average happiness score of 17.0 among once-a-week dancers to 23.1 among women dancing five to seven times a week.

The likely mechanism reads like a small, self-reinforcing loop: repeated participation builds roles and social bonds, which build self-worth, which brings people back for more. One dancer, now the group’s unofficial DJ, put it more simply — it makes her feel useful. Rain was the one reliable disruption, pointing to a policy fix as unglamorous as it is obvious: a covered pavilion.

MethodRegression analysis, N=28 · 5-item emotional wellbeing scale · semi-structured interviews
SiteFangta Garden, Changshu
FindingHappiness score rose from 17.0 (1–2 sessions/wk) to 23.1 (5–7 sessions/wk)
Women square dancing in a park in the evening Interview subjects walking through the neighbourhood Printed survey and consent forms pinned to a board Research poster summarising the square-dance study Research poster showing regression analysis results

打破假设,建立尊重Breaking Assumptions, Building Respect

Regional Excellent Honor HOSA Health Education · Grade 11

A two-lesson curriculum on stereotypes, consent, and personal boundaries, written for 10–13-year-olds at a Changshu public school still without formal health education. A five-person team wrote the lessons, ran pre- and post-tests, and taught them in Chinese across two 50-minute sessions to a class of 25. A role-play exchange — “Can I have that candy?” — stood in for consent; a basketball passed hand to hand stood in for the stereotype that boys are naturally better at sport.

The unit earned HOSA’s Regional Excellent Honor in Health Education, and it became the template for the wider teaching work below.

TeamA five-person team, co-designed and co-taught
Audience25 students, ages 10–13, Changshu public school
ResultHOSA Regional Excellent Honor, Health Education
HOSA Regional Excellent Honor certificate of achievement HOSA certificate of participation Lesson plan page on health education topic reasoning Lesson plan page analysing the target audience Parent feedback questionnaire used to evaluate the lessons Class presentation slides on stereotypes and identity Class presentation slides on consent and boundaries
Teaching & Advocacy

同行Mostly Taught Through Playing

Nearly all of this ended up using theatre as the method — not because drama is my hobby, but because a ten-year-old will act out a boundary they would never discuss, and a room full of volunteers will remember a scene long after they have forgotten a slide.

Grade 10 · 6 hrs/week

HOPE: Gender EducationUWC Changshu

Led 20+ volunteers, split into teaching and support crews, delivering drama-based gender education to four classes of 25–30 students at local primary schools — body awareness, beauty diversity, menstrual stigma, and assault prevention — with the program reaching toward Liangshan, Sichuan.

4 classes · 25–30 students each · 20+ volunteers led
Grades 11–12 · 6 hrs/week

Sintillate: Children’s MusicalUWC Changshu

Co-led the drama section, teaching fundamentals to 30 primary students at Changshu Miaoquan Primary School and working with eight fellow student teachers to rehearse and stage musicals — including Zootopia — for a final showcase. I also designed the club’s mascot myself and made the stickers we handed out to the kids.

30 students · 8 co-teachers · full staged showcase
Grades 11–12 · 4 hrs/week

Running in the Dark黑暗跑团

Trained as a guide runner for an NGO that has worked across 54 Chinese cities since 2014, pairing sighted volunteers with visually impaired runners. I guide walkers and runners through marathons — the training is mostly learning to describe a road well enough that someone can trust it.

Guide runner · marathon events
Seven years · New Year’s money

Wu Shi Volunteer Group吾是义工团

Seven years of supporting a student in the mountains outside Wenzhou with my own Lunar New Year gift money. I also teach sign language to incoming volunteers and assist elderly participants during community dance sessions.

3× Charity & Volunteer Award
Grades 10–11

Women’s & LGBTQ+ AdvocacyUWC Changshu

Campus advocacy through performance and events — Drag Race, the Color Run, and Keep Marching, an ensemble monologue piece I performed for V-Week — alongside the Shared Period Box installation.

★ KUNCHENG SPARK Award
Grades 10–12 · 4 hrs/week

Outdoors & Ensemble知行

Kayaking, sailing, cycling, and dragon dance — regular training plus school Olympics and public performances, including leading the dragon through its full routine on the main stage at UWC Changshu’s 10th Anniversary Graduation Ceremony. The Qiandao Lake ride around the whole lake is where I learned what leading a tired group actually costs.

★ Outdoor Leadership, Keystone Adventures Watch dragon dance practice
Grade 10 · 4 hrs/week

TEDx Production CrewTEDxUWCChangshuChina

Ran production for the school’s TEDx society — reaching out to speakers and shaping their talks with them, calling cues backstage on show day, and typing live bilingual captions that scrolled beneath each speaker in real time.

Speaker liaison · live show-calling · real-time EN/CN captions
HOPE gender education session, students facing a classroom chalkboard
Primary school students in a HOPE gender education classroom
Sintillate musical rehearsal, students in princess costumes
Sintillate musical performance, students in animal costumes on stage
Two guide runners jogging together on a road
Two children outside a home in the mountains outside Wenzhou
Photo booth with a HOPE frame at a gender education event
Sitting at an exhibition booth with a presentation board
Dance ensemble performing on a lit stage
Group photo of the Running in the Dark volunteer team
Dragon boat kayaking on the lake at sunset
Sailing a small boat on calm water
Group cycling trip, posing beside bicycles on a trail
Dragon dance performance, close-up of the dragon on a lit stage
Dragon dance performance at UWC Changshu, dragon raised overhead
Full production crew on stage behind the TEDx letters after the event
Backstage sound and live-captioning desk during a TEDx talk
Dance ensemble under blue stage lighting
Dance ensemble in flowing costumes on stage
A workshop session with participants observing a presentation
Large group photo on a school field at night
Large group hiking trip, posing near an old stone structure in the woods
Painting a large colorful mural of cartoon animal characters
Playing in a school basketball match, teammates in yellow jerseys
Honors

荣誉The Five That Matter Most

All five were earned in Grade 11, in the two areas I intend to keep working in: making images and asking researchable questions.

Before UWC

Where this started

I auditioned for the Children’s Dream Drama Club in Grade 1 — six rounds of them — and stayed until I graduated primary school, eventually as its president. Over those years I acted, wrote, directed, and designed across sixteen productions, several of which we ticketed ourselves and gave the proceeds to charities supporting children with autism and families living with Alzheimer’s. I still go back to direct and design for them.

The archive below is the whole of it: primary and middle school, 2016 to 2023. I have left the prize list itself off this site, because a decade of arts-festival certificates is not what I am asking to be read as now. But this is where my hands were trained, and I would rather show the rooms than the ribbons.

19 productions, newest first back to 2016 · each cover is the poster or the best shot — click through to page through that production’s full set.

Video still from the graduation theme song music video
《星光少年》Starlight Youth2023 · Graduation theme song
Watch the official MV
A large school choir performing in a concert hall 1 / 8
Xiushan Middle School Choir2021–24 · Lead, upper voices · 8 photos
Watch: 2022 graduation song
Title card for the school history documentary My Xiuzhong Era 1 / 5
《我的绣中时代》My Xiuzhong Era2021 · School documentary · 5 photos
Immersive installation room strung with lights and floating orbs 1 / 6
《蛋有引力》Egg Has Gravity2021 · Set build · 6 photos
Poster for the immersive production Twenty-Four 1 / 9
《二十四》Twenty-Four2021 · Poster · 9 photos
Poster for the original avant-garde piece ta 1 / 8
《ta》2021 · Poster · 8 photos
Mixed media painting honouring frontline healthcare workers
Frontline 「抗疫」2020 · Mixed media
Illustrated portrait of a girl with flowers, mixed media
Portrait2020 · Mixed media
Surreal mixed media painting of a masked figure among planets
Untitled2020 · Mixed media, framed
Title card for the primary school production Hello, Goodbye 1 / 4
《你好,再见》Hello, Goodbye2020 · 4 photos
Ensemble in character under blue stage light 1 / 6
《偷记忆的人》2020 · 6 photos
Mixed media relief sculpture of a globe ringed by paper landmarks, titled China Our Home 1 / 3
China, Our Home2019 · Relief sculpture · 3 photos
Ensemble on stage under a projected heart graphic 1 / 9
《记得》Remember2019 · 9 photos
Still from the micro-film Fangfang's World, two children facing each other 1 / 8
《方方的世界》2019 · 8 photos
Ensemble portrait in masks against a black background 1 / 5
《爱·死亡·贪婪》2019 · 5 photos
Performers on stage during the drama festival showcase 1 / 10
《陪伴》Companion2018–19 · 10 photos
Children in colourful costumes performing on stage 1 / 6
《文具争功》Stationery Wars2017 · 6 photos
Two performers in bright costumes on a storybook stage set 1 / 7
《南南与眼睛怪》2017 · Children’s musical · 7 photos
Children in colourful costumes on stage during the finals 1 / 4
《标点符号》Punctuation2016 · National finals, Beijing · 4 photos