Radical Characters is a platform dedicated to exploring speculative connections between design and culture within and beyond the Chinese and Chinese American communities. We operate as a study group and curatorial project initiating projects focused on graphic design, typography, and culture through 汉字 Hanzi (Chinese characters). Our projects extend into the forms of exhibitions, publications, lectures, and workshops.

Selected Projects & Updates

Oracle Bone Scripts Listening Cap

Publication and cap

Designed by Mary Y. Yang with darning embroidery by Jonathan Pinchera

The modern Chinese character “listen” (tīng) contains the eye, ear, and heart radicals. This cap features the oracle bone scripts eye (mù), ear (ěr), and heart (xīn). Oracle bone script is the earliest known form of systematic Chinese writing, which dates back to the late 2nd millennium BC. Inscriptions were made by carving characters into oracle bones such as pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron.

Includes a booklet hang tag/bookmark with over 55 oracle bone scripts for reference.

6 panel low profile, snow washed superior cotton twill with darning embroidery. Made in Brooklyn, New York.

Embodied Making As Collective Publishing: The Body and Hanzi

Workshop, lecture, publication

Led by Chen Luo (Body&Forma) and Mary Y. Yang (Radical Characters)

A workshop to explore how embodied making can inform collective publishing. During the workshop, participants explored the relationship between the body and Hanzi (Chinese characters) through a series of hands-on exercises to create collaborative, wearable posters. Participants practiced writing Hanzi at a large scale by making a human-proportioned poster. How can embodied making create a space for collective exchange and expression? What does collective publishing look like through collaborative labor in a shared space and time? What are ways that we can examine the boundaries between bodies and print, typography and space, and the individual to the collective?

This zine documents our Embodied Making As Collective Publishing: The Body and Hanzi workshop in collaboration with Chen Luo of Body&Forma. The workshop explored the relationship between the body and Hanzi through a series of hands-on exercises to create collaborative, wearable posters. The zine includes lecture notes, workshop instructions, workshop results, and a mini wearable poster.

Radical Return Catalog

Publication

Edited by Zhongkai Li and Mary Y. Yang

Published by Radical Characters, IS A Gallery, Boston University Art Galleries 2022
Bilingual, in Chinese and English

Foreword by Peiran Tan (The Type) with essay contributions by Jay Li, Tongji Philip Qian, Yao Meng

Softcover, 162 pages, full color digital, 7.5 × 7.5 inches

ISBN 979-8-21-803249-4

Includes index and recommended reading list

Exhibition catalog for Radical Return 《文字的回返》, the first exhibition presented by Radical Characters.

The exhibition, simultaneously exhibited in 2021 at the Boston University Art Galleries in Boston, Massachusetts, and at IS A GALLERY in Shanghai, China, invited participants from around the world to use the Chinese character “回” (huí) or “return” as a grid—visually or conceptually—to frame submissions. The selected work, which appears in this catalog, features 36 Chinese and Chinese American artists and graphic designers who explore acts of return through language, tradition, memory, identity, and history. Working across a range of media, these designers and artists embrace, challenge, and expand what it means to "return" in their artistic practice and in relation to their positions in the world today.

Figure, Character, Sign: Radical Return travels to A Plus A Gallery in Venice, Italy

Exhibition

Curated by Dana Clancy and Mary Y. Yang

July 29 – August 19, 2022
A Plus A Gallery
Venice, Italy

In Figure, Character, Sign, ritualized artistic return to a subject is an important form of cultural inquiry and a source for creative work. By circling back to the past—and to language, identity, archetypal images, earthly elements, and card games—the artists in this exhibition develop new forms of expression, share research, and raise questions about the individual relative to the collective. Patterns of stones, water, stars, and leaves evoke nature, spiritual ritual, the context of Venice, and connections between the human and non-human—a theme of the 2022 Venice Biennale.

Read more here

Radical Return

Exhibition

Curated by Mary Y. Yang & Zhongkai Li

Presented by Boston University Art Galleries
College of Fine Arts
November 8–December 12, 2021
Boston, Massachusetts, USA

&

IS A GALLERY
November 20–December 20, 2021
Jing'an, Shanghai, China

Boston University Art Galleries and IS A GALLERY present in partnership Radical Return, an exhibition that highlights Chinese and Chinese American graphic designers. Radical Return is co-curated by Mary Y. Yang, Assistant Professor of Art, Graphic Design at Boston University School of Visual Arts and Zhongkai Li, Director of IS A GALLERY. The exhibition will be on view simultaneously at BU Art Galleries in Boston, Massachusetts from November 8 to December 12 and at IS A GALLERY in Shanghai, China from November 20 to December 20, 2021.

Artist and designers:
Evelyn Bi, Elias Chen, Weiyun Chen, Xing Cheung, Muyuan He, Gene Hua, Oliver Hua, Howsem Huang, Felix Huang, Daedalus Guoning Li, Cecily Li, Qiuwen Li, Jay Li, Angela Lian, Guang Qin Lin, Leslie Liu, Chen Luo, Yuedi Lyu, Maya Man, Candice Ng, Zhengzhong Pan, Desmond Pang, Tongji Philip Qian, Jiang Shan, Karen Tian, Zihao Wang, Mac (Naiqian) Wang, Yufei Weng, Bin Wu, Boyang Xia, Spencer Yujia Yan, Nina Jun Yuchi, Zhang Zhan, Eager Zhang, Dan Zhang, and Zipeng Zhu.

Read more here

© 2025 Radical Characters

Radical Characters About Featured Projects Tone in Tongue Radical Return Embodied Making As Collective Publishing: The Body and Hanzi

Radical Characters
About

Featured Projects
Tone in Tongue
Radical Return
Embodied Making
As Collective Publishing:
The Body and Hanzi