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Jewellery & Metal (MA)

Layla Yuanxing Lin

This work is a piece of Layla's forged silver 'bowl' made from her hand-woven silver sheet.

Layla (Yuanxing) Lin, based in London, originally from Xiamen, China, is a jeweller and craft practitioner with specific interests in feminist theory and women’s crafts. After graduating from Jewellery Design at Central Saint Martin’s (CSM) during COVID-19, she spent a year studying Cultural and Critical Studies at Birkbeck College while working as a graduate assistant at CSM; the busy work-and-study year made her reflect deeply about the responsibility of her future as a Chinese female artist. As a result, Layla’s delicately made work has evolved from a wide range of literature, from her leisure reading fiction to Chinese cultural studies and postmodernist feminism. Layla will continue to think critically against rationality and hierarchical power in her craft field in the future.


Degree Details

School of Arts & HumanitiesJewellery & Metal (MA)RCA2023 at Battersea and Kensington

RCA Battersea, Woo Building, First and third floors

This is a piece of work of 'surfacing the crack', made by hand-woven silver wire and has been shaped into a bowl.

Occurring in the gap between the visible and the invisible, a crack is then surfaced by our eyes.  Roaming between the void of reality and imagination, a ghost of the forgotten soul is then recognised. My practice aims to critique, reflect and question the authenticity of empowered decoration by unveiling its skeleton using the technique of weaving to construct and deconstruct things simultaneously. 

Silver is the metal of moonshine, the humble flesh of the noblest gold. It ripples into a pool of subtlety but fuses easily into the space of a void. An object is the appearance of hierarchy. An object is the embodiment of time. An object’s function is to be ornamental while ignoring the crime of decoration and the burden of beauty, such as what is underneath the precious materiality of silver — the cruel inequality of a certain kind of value that marks the line between the miserable and the noble. Thus, in my work the woven texture, alongside the techniques of fusing and soldering, creates dotted surfaces of cracks and fragments, which challenge the solid and dominant power of visible phallocentric history.

The project 'Surfacing The Crack', is a set of objects shaped from hand-woven fine wires, accompanied by several critical texts written by the maker, it aims to challenge the authority of functional and meaningful art objects in the field of jewellery and metal.




This is a silver bowl
From Spider Web To The Crack in the glass – From spider web to the crack in the glass, this forged bowl made from hand-woven fine silver wire narrates the transformation of the role of women from the inhuman side to the visible and mundane world. The extremely light and finely woven 'textile' of fine silver has been forged and crushed into a 'displayable' bowl, underneath this delicately built piece is a penetrating power of textile that seeks to invade the unchallengeable system of modern world.
this is a demonstration of how the silver wire is woven
Hand weaving provess – This 'textile' is completely woven by hand with 0.2mm silver wire, every dots of overlapped wires is soldered and fused to strengthen the durability of this extremely light material.

Medium:

Fine silver

Size:

13cm *13cm *7cm
contemporary-jewellerycraftfeminismobjectsilvertextileweave
The close-up of the silver woven bead necklace
Using silver as the main material refers to my cultural background because silver was used as a metaphor for prostitutes in late-imperial vernacular stories. Stories like 'Dushiniang Angrily Sinks A Treasure Chest', describes how the value of an individual has been marked as taels of silver. Using the metaphor from the story, I hide a piece of pure gold wire inside few of the woven beads that constitute the necklace to merge and blur the value of gold and silver.
On the other hand, I want to unveil the skeleton of hierarchical treasures in the story. Following Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, we are taught with the possibility of being a woman by trespassing
On the other hand, I want to unveil the skeleton of hierarchical treasures in the story. Following Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, we are taught with the possibility of being a woman by trespassing the boundaries of reality and imagination. It inspires me to break the boundaries of complete and incomplete, empowerment and weaknesses, noble and poor, visible and invisible and last but not least: functional and dysfunctional. Therefore, this piece also discusses how imagination and creation transform.

Medium:

Fine Silver, Pure Gold
contemporary-jewellerypearlweave
This is a piece of copper woven sample
With the contrast to the object in the museum and how they eventually remain only as fragments, my weaving practice, on the other hand, interweave the visible and invisible spheres of life.
This is a piece of copper woven sample
This is the first experiment of the project, the visit to British Museum has inspired me to combine my researches in women’s craft and the exhibited historical resources. I am devoted to developing a craft that has its root in the female spirit, which is invisible, ignored and fragmented in the meta-narrative and phallocentric history.

Medium:

Copper, Solder

Size:

6cm * 6cm * 5cm
contemporary-jewellerymetaltextileweave
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Royal College of Art

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