During the first workshop in the Migrating Crafts series, illustrator and PhD researcher Yingda Dong bridged ancient Chinese calligraphy with modern digital iconography. The session explored how traditional, embodied craft practices transform when shifted into modern contexts dominated by screens, keyboards, and digital symbols. Drawing inspiration from Xu Bing’s conceptual works and Gestalt closure principles, participants experimented with ink, bodily rhythm, and movement to trace how gesture carries emotion and meaning. By combining traditional brushstrokes, fluid marks, and self-invented signs with everyday emoji, participants constructed their own cross-cultural visual narratives. The workshop framed calligraphy as an evolving, migrating medium rather than a static artifact, inviting audiences to actively reimagine contemporary visual communication.

Yingda Dong is an illustrator and PhD researcher at LUCA School of Arts / KU Leuven in Ghent. His work explores how different cultural perspectives come together in visual language and illustration. His work has been shown at the Bologna Illustrators Exhibition, Grafixx Festival and in his solo exhibition Tabi in Japan.