Xinmei Liu Draws the Future with a Visual Grammar Mined from the Past

Commissioned to illustrate a feature on NASA’s defunded Mars Sample Return program and China’s advancing Tianwen-3 mission, Shanghai-born, US-based illustrator Xinmei Liu chose to render the entire series in the visual grammar of mid-century Chinese state propaganda.

Liu’s MFA thesis at the School of Visual Arts, “Model Citizen Guidelines,” was built entirely on propaganda poster aesthetics. What started as grad school research has become, commission by commission, a professional signature now deployed at the highest editorial level.

Liu, a Pratt and SVA graduate repped by Debut Art with recent commissions from The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Bloomberg, has built her career on cultural fluency over cultural shorthand. She’s spoken about refusing the obvious signifiers. No red flags, no dragons. Instead she draws from the actual design DNA of her upbringing. 1930s Shanghai ad posters. ‘80s propaganda graphics. Childhood product packaging. She deploys it all with great care.

Here, she takes an unusual tonal risk, swapping her signature satirical edge for something approaching sincerity. The series presents China’s space ambitions with the same earnest grandeur the program’s own communications use. Whether that reads as admiration or irony is left unresolved.

On Instagram, Liu captioned the final image with disarming simplicity: “Love this project so much as it combines two of my favorite things: space and posters!” It’s a reminder that the best editorial commissions happen when personal obsession meets an editorial need.