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Jewellery & Metal (MA)

Minghui Zhang

My works talk about the story of my mother in the past two years, how she came out of a desperate marriage and its ashes. My mother is like a flower in her menopause, with a kind of resistance and re-blooming of her own active choices. Heading for the second spring.

Through mixed mediums including watercolours, sketches, antique mirrors, and metal fragments, I try to create blurred and textured overlapping images that increase the viewer's understanding of the dimension of time. Overlapping images that aim to open up a contemplation of the nature of time.

By reconstructing the fragments in the painting, I try to describe these fragments as embers, traumas, and unpleasant memories of past mothers. Comparing introspection to pruning, these fragments are evidence of her second spring.

These fragments are also like embers, still flickering dimly in the fire, embers still burning in the heart, making her stronger and more beautiful.











Degree Details

School of Arts & HumanitiesJewellery & Metal (MA)RCA2023 at Truman Brewery

Truman Brewery, F Block, Ground, first and second floors

I am a multi-media researcher, most of my works are inspired by narrative and exploratory research.

I trained initially as a jeweller. Though still engaging with the body and what it wears, and also with aspects of traditional jewellery crafting, my current work spans different media and forms and has become materially much more curious.  

Thematically my practice is locating itself in pursuing personal histories. My process takes its inspiration from this, playing with the effects of layered memories and the potential for healing that may come through encounters with objects, even after deep hurt.


Mirror, Second spring
Blooming DecisonUsing the device of an antique mirror, placing tiny irregular magnets on the surface to move and change the image within.
Second Spring
Second SpringIt discusses the process that women go through when they are hurt and a kind of resistance and re-blooming of their own active choices. Many things in women can be hidden, numb, and weak in life, but the truth will always be revealed, returned to the original, and reborn I am trying to describe the ambiguous decay and rebirth, as a hopeful starting point for passing through the unknown.