Zhiyi Wang is a jewellery designer from China. She received her BFA in jewellery design from the Pratt Institute in 2021 and is now pursuing her MA in Jewellery & Metal at the Royal College of Art. As symbolism and narrative play a significant role in her work, Zhiyi treats jewellery-making as a way of storytelling. She explores the method of using concrete metal forms to present the intangible in her current practice, aiming at visualising abstract emotional feelings.
Zhiyi Wang
"To know of nights before or after, the little while that we may last." - Fernando Pessoa
Responding to this poem, Zhiyi investigates the transient nature of human existence and the quest for understanding amidst this impermanence. Her recent collection, "REAL /i/ LLUSION", focuses on extracting instant emotion from valuable moments in her life and transferring it into wearable objects. People do not live for a lifetime but instead live for a series of moments. Retrieving and extracting emotions from a specific moment involves not only engaging oneself in the past experience and memory but enlarging immediate fulfilment and pleasure.
Zhiyi depicts her collection as an album. The introduction is a set of enamel brooches in the form of distorted Polaroid films, presenting the process of retrieving treasured moments. While conducting experiments on the enamel transfer, Zhiyi intentionally folds and distorts the metal to get crackle effects on the surface to show the idea of deformation. The introduction is followed by four other wearable objects derived from the designer's intuitive and abstract emotional responses when experiencing those moments. They interact with the wearer's body to correspond to the feeling of emptiness, unsettlement, infinity, breathing, and floating.
“Fragmented” is a set of brooches developed from reminiscences of delightful and healing moments. Engaging myself in those moments slows the living pace and escapes from reality. It feels like deep breathing after diving in the water for a long time. I tried to record and freeze a specific moment by taking distorted Polaroid films as primary forms and experimenting with the enamel transfer. We cannot keep time and memory as we wish to. Emotional feelings to a moment are instant.
Medium:
Sterling silver, Enamel, CopperSize:
6.7 x 5.5 x 1cm
“Emptiness” is one of four wearable objects derived from my intuitive and abstract emotional responses when retrieving past feelings as a process of self-rescue. While designing this piece, I pictured myself trapped in an empty room. The sun shines through the window gap, and the glass is glittering. The surrounding is bright and vivid, but I cannot find the exit. To enforce the unsettlement, I linked a chain across the brooch structure. It dangles down and gently moves with the body when wearing it.
Medium:
Sterling silver, ZirconSize:
8 x 8 x 4cm
I walked out of the empty room. The sunset blurs my eyes. The solar halo absorbs me as I entangle with memories. I felt infinity and circulation. Taking the halo as a reference, I designed a pair of rings based on the Morbius strip, symbolising endless.
Medium:
Sterling silver, Zircon
Through the process of recalling past experiences, it was like injecting fresh air into my body and immersing myself in those delightful and healing moments. Memories may be substantial, but a specific moment is vigorous and light. Imagining running on the beach and listening to the sound of ocean waves and gentle breeze, I designed this mouthpiece to interpret breathing and escaping.
Medium:
Sterling silver, ResinSize:
15 x 7 x 6cm
Those delightful and healing moments constitute a “utopia” separated from real life. Recalling the instant feeling of a moment is my way of escaping from real life and attempting to achieve freedom. Towards the last stage of the self-rescue procedure, I fabricated this pair of ear hooks which hang on the ear, looking like floating in the air.
