Zhiyu You is an illustrator and visual artist born in China and based in New York. Combining painting techniques and digital drawing, You’s artistic vocabulary is developed from her Chinese heritage. Her work depicts the unequal situations of women and minorities, also the relationships between humans, animals and machines.

For her Zócalo Sketchbook, You offers us a psychedelic aquarium of fish that expand and reveal themselves to symbolize her name. “In Chinese, Zhi means wildflower, Yu means fish. So I combined and expanded these two symbols to create this series,” she tells Zócalo.