Treacherous Water

Victo Ngai

This wintery image is for the PLANSPONSOR Dec issue. What is the article about? I don’t really know.

I have been working with SooJin for more than 3 years now and have lost count of how many jobs we have collaborated together. It’s safe to say 90% of the time I am not completely sure what the articles were about, even after reading them. 

PLANSPONSOR is a very specialized trade publication for pension fund CIOs. Even though it is in English, it makes as much sense to me as elfish. Luckily SooJin would translate the assignments into simple phrases like “derisk”, “the new standard”, ” overloaded with information”, “tension between choosing”.etc.  This time it was ” going seprately and individually in harsh environment”.

I really enjoy this process of coming up visuals and metaphors base off a single abstract phrase. I may never understand the articles I illustrate for, but I sure have my own eleborate tales behind each of those images. (I would rather remember this piece as a red fox watching a majestic whale drifting apart into tiny fishes in an icy ocean than “securities lending disclosures” anyway. )

Thank you SooJin for making commissioned work feel like personal fun.

And I really hope it will snow this year.