Victo Ngai

Early life

Victo Ngai was born in the Guangdong Province in China, before moving to Hong Kong with her parents as a child. She then attended the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 2010 with a BFA majoring in Illustration. After graduation she began her career as an artist and illustrator in New York City.

Commissioned work

Ngai’s first published illustration was for the Plansponsor Magazine, which was published during her third year of university. Ngai’s artwork has also appeared in The New York Times, Scientific American, The New Yorker, the Village Voice, Wired Magazine, and The Boston Globe. She has also done cover work for Variety and Computerworld. She has also had work commissioned from McDonald’s and Tiger Beer’s Chinese New Year promotions, in addition to ad campaigns for the New York subway system, Lufthansa airlines, and General Electric. In addition to ad campaigns and magazine work, Ngai has also produced work for book covers and interiors. Robert Newman has written of her commissions that, “Victo works with a restrained and limited color palette, which makes her illustrations all the more remarkable for their power and richness. Detailed and precise, her work has glimpses of comic book drawings, classic children’s book illustrations, the work of Japanese painters, and much more.”

Film work

In 2014, Ngai produces the artwork for the film Divergent’s promotional posters. Limited edition posters of the artwork were made for the release of the film in IMAX theatres. In 2015 Ngai’s work was featured in the Linda Hoaglund documentary film The Wound And The Gift, illustrations that were in turn animated by Joe Wu, and punctuate the film’s narrative.

Exhibitions

In 2015, eight examples of Ngai’s illustrative work was a part of the fairy tale imagery exhibition put on by the British Academy and Folio Society. The Society also released the book Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies based on the exhibition, which contains the eight Ngai illustrations. Leo Timm said of her work that the “delicate lines and otherwise concise figures are accentuated by her powerful use of color and contrast”. In April 2016, a retrospective of her work will be exhibited at the Richard C. von Hess Illustration Gallery of The University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Recognition

In 2013 she won two gold medals from the Society of Illustrators Annual Competition, and in 2014 she received a gold medal from the Greater China Illustration Awards. In 2014, Ngai was also named to the Forbes Magazine 30 under 30, in the Art & Style category. In 2015 Ngai was awarded the silver medal at the international Society for News Design competition, for her illustrations in “Falling under his spell”, a Boston Globe article.