Youada was born in the 90’s in Mingnan, a region on the coast of Southern Fujian Province, China: When you look at his paintings, there are blurry mounds of soft vibrant tingles. Beneath the fog of color are iconography from the west and east, seemingly depicted with irony and Youada’s idiosyncratic airbrushed style. It’s Sailor Moon, a mob of looming gangsters, macho kangaroos, and a cutesy Chinese dragon.

Youada’s thoughts are guided by pure intuition and painted onto canvas. In the 1990’s, a collective upsurge of graffiti culture from the West had jumpstarted street art in Chinese capitals, as acts of defiance rebelling against times of rapid urbanization and pervasive corruption brought upon by political propaganda.

Anti-establishment activism and destruction is a constant theme and of great importance to upholding the progressive trajectory of street art. Though, Youada seems to always keep his references close; his beginnings exist as a form of interpreting his culture and significant marks of childhood, like scouring soil for wild vegetables with his family and seeing hours of cartoons. His works mostly consist of acrylic paints, but methods of spraying ring to his graffiti background and this airbrushed look which enhances the occasional linework he chooses to feature.

Recently, Youada has collaborated with Unit London on a virtual exhibition in support of Street Art for Mankind, a charity dedicated to fighting forced child labour through murals and public art.

Youada, what was growing up in Hangzhou like for you? I wonder about how your childhood inspires you.

I was born in a small town in the south of China, Hokkien. 90's in my home town there were a lot of smuggled VCDs, cracked CD, and at that time the TV was full of Japanese cartoons. During that period I was crazy about reading comics, watching animation, watching movies and listening to music every day. And I also love the traditional temple culture of Fujian Minnan, the traditional Minnan customs. I started street graffiti in junior high school, then entered the China Academy of Art to study photography until I started my painting after graduating from college.

You have a nostalgic and innocent energy to your artworks, have you always embraced your intuition and purity in this style?

The subjects of my artworks are mostly images that I remember more than just cartoons, characters from movies. There are also some of the punks I saw in the town when I was a kid, or news characters, and there are also many images of people from classical paintings I saw during my college years. But I would add some new representations to them with my imagination.

With an obvious affinity to subverting cultural symbols like 黑猫警长（Inspector Black Cat), 美少女战士 (Sailor Moon), and the Chinese Dragon in your paintings, how do you see the importance of irony?

I don't intentionally make political comments or irony, I just take what I see at the moment and paint the picture with my intuitive feelings. Some of them I think are romantic things, some of them I think are cute things, but maybe they will make the audience feel a sense of irony.

There’s a dual importance of street art in China, one is defiling the systematic sternness existing historically, and the other challenging the western perception that can see the culture as repressive and collectivized. Do you ever think about where your art stands culturally?

I don't think about the cultural status of my art, usually my life is focused on taking care of my family and taking care of my children. I spend very little time creating on a daily basis, I spend a lot of time in nature. I would go digging for wild vegetables, look for streams in the forest, pick some fruits, fish, etc. When I was younger I loved street culture and what I appreciated most about it was its destructive nature.

You very recently collaborated with Unit London in displaying an online exhibition room for the Street Art for Mankind charity, why did you choose this organization?

For the collaboration with UNIT LONDON, the charity project I wanted to choose at first was about the new crown epidemic. But maybe there was no such research institution, so they helped me choose a street art charity.