Zhejiao Jin

Details of the garment made by the designer.

Fabric Neighbours, front of the Garment-1

Fabric Neighbours, back of the Garment

Fabric Neighbours-Process

Posters, flyers, privacy authorization form – 1. Elevators and corridors feature promotional posters. 2. I knocked on the doors of 220 households in Building B, distributing flyers and requesting spare clothes. Out of the 148 households that responded, 79 households contributed a piece of clothing that they no longer wore. Based on this, the corresponding cloth system was established. 3.An application form was utilized to gather information regarding usage preferences.

The website

In Collaboration with:

Building B's 78 residents in Griffon Studio

Medium:

fabric, paper, yarn

Size:

100*50cm

The witnesses

The invisible nature of domestic work prevents the value of the working party from being reflected, and the worker has few witnesses to his or her labor. Like Sisyphean stones, domestic work is constantly being produced and completed. For the other partner, the house seems to be immaculate, with clean sheets, polished floors, ironed clothes... Everything has changed, everything seems to be unchanged.

My project aims to visualize the invisible work of the household by transforming the tools of the household work so that the tools become the witnesses of the work and the work is measured as a series of numbers. The first object is a broom that counts the distance dragged, the second is a lint sticker that knows how many turns of sticky paper have been used and the third is a meat cleaver that knows how many times food has been cut. Through these visible numbers, the invisible value of domestic work can be re-visited and distributed in a way that reminds people that both parties in the family have equal obligations.

The Knife-1

The Knife-2

The lint

The bloom-1

The bloom-2

Medium:

Wood, battery, display, plastic,

Size:

20*10*3cm, 25*5*5cm, 100*50*20cm

balence domestic gender-politics labour tools

When our country undergoes urbanization and we find ourselves surrounded by unfamiliar faces and buildings, detached from our familiar social circles, how should we go about rebuilding the connections between people?

Zhejiao Jin's design focus is using physical objects to foster community continuation. In a student apartment with frequent resident turnover, Zhejiao takes a two-pronged approach. First, she collects clothes from 79 residents of Building B and stitches them together, symbolizing the physical space that connects the community. Second, she creates an online platform for community members, enabling them to connect and initiate conversations using fabric fragments. This project aims to cultivate shared memories, establish connections, and ensure the ongoing existence of the community.

Jin Zhejiao, a designer/artist from China, completed her undergraduate degree at the Shanghai Institute of Design, China Academy of Art, before coming to the Royal College of Art in the United Kingdom to pursue a master's degree in Product Design. She is committed to using design as a force to drive social change and optimization. Jin is a social field activist who leverages her profound empathic abilities to engage in face-to-face interviews, seeking points of entry for design and facilitating communication. She focuses on the labor inequalities caused by power structures and the increasing alienation of human relationships in contemporary urbanization. She believes that we can achieve "gentle intervention" through design by combining the power of communities and local contexts, creating a design system that continually optimizes and transforms.

Zhejiao Jin

In Collaboration with:

Medium:

Size:

The witnesses

Medium:

Size:

Social

About

Royal College of Art