BFA Illustration faculty member Marcos Chin’s Summer 2022 SVA subway poster.
BFA Illustration faculty member Marcos Chin is an award-winning artist whose colorful, decorative and often ebullient work has appeared on textiles, wall designs and album covers; and in advertisements, fashion catalogs, books and magazines. This summer, it can be seen somewhere else: the New York City subway system. Chin has created the latest in SVA’s long-running series of posters designed for display in city subway stations. Given that the poster was installed in June, it is especially fitting that the educator and illustrator decided to give it an LGBTQIA+ Pride focus.
"Definitely, the intention of this poster was to show my queerness,” Chin says in his video interview about the work, which you can see below. “I use that kind of aesthetic to inform the character who I want to create."
Outside of SVA, Chin’s long list of clients includes Apple, Fiat, Ford, GQ, Honda, Kiehl’s, MTA Arts for Transit, Neiman Marcus, Starbucks, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated and Time. He has given lectures and workshops throughout the U.S. and abroad.
“This [project], for me, was an opportunity to say really something more than maybe I had said in the past,” he says. “And [it] reflects a part of me that I kept hidden for a long time.”
"As a gay, Chinese person with brown skin, this gave me an opportunity to put that out there so other people, who may feel as though they're not being seen, or represented in media spaces, when they look at that [poster], they might change their minds.”
To hear and see more about Chin’s process and his SVA poster design, check out the latest “Subway Series” video profile below.