LCW25: Unanchored Crafting

What is it

Craft, unmoored from its geographic anchor, becomes a site of translation between people in the tides of cultural convergence.

Unanchored Crafting is delighted to collaborate with 20 international artists and the Jewellery & Metal Studio at Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai University, to present their remarkable works during the 2025 London Craft Week. Together, they explore new contexts for craft in an era of cultural fluidity.

The exhibition features metalwork, lacquer, enamel, CNC machining, and more—intertwined with visual symbols from diverse disciplines, crossing time and space. With acute sensitivity, the artists trace the fractures and reconstructions of materiality, and through deeply personal practices, respond to shifting notions of identity, power, and perception.

Through decoding memory, material, and emotion, a cultural landscape both unfamiliar and alluring takes shape.

Here, craft becomes a language of exploration—an imaginative response to an uncertain world.

Yating XIE (MA RCA）
Metalsmith
Founder of TaJo Studio

 

Established in 2003, the Jewellery & Metal Studio at SAFA, Shanghai University, has been integrating the floating, unanchored and becoming context of contemporary jewellery & metal globally with Chinese long historical material and intangible culture. We expect to see, discover and form the unexpected, and refine, recalibrate and reconstruct the extraordinary from the ordinary through making and crafting to shapen insight into the rapidly changing world culturally and techniqually. To be very delightful and grateful, we have the opportunity to share four of our MA students' works, Yuanyuan Yu, Siqi Huang, Rui Gao, and Yuxuan Lin H, in "Unanchored Crafting", presenting a series of intellectural outcomes about how they engage and resonate with the past, current and future.

Chong SHI (MA RCA)
Lecturer, Jewellery & Metal Studio
Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts
Shanghai University

 

Curator: Xuan Xu, Yating Xie
Organizer: Alsolike Gallery
Academic Support: Jewellery and Metal Studio, Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai University
Curatorial Coordinator: Wanqian Zhang
Programme Director: Yiru Zhang

 

When is it

12 May, 2025 -Private view

18:00-21:00

 

12 May  - 18 May, 2025

10:30 - 18:30

 

Where to visit

Alsolike

16 Chance Street

London

E2 7JB

 

Artists

Ariel Li

Ariel Li is a spatial artist and speculative narrator whose work explores the relationship between space, memory, and identity. Focusing on old objects, she investigates how textures, forms, and material dialogues reveal hidden histories and emotional resonance. Her recent series transforms everyday items into narrative vessels, prompting reflection on impermanence, continuity, and cultural memory. By bridging past and present through material storytelling, Li invites viewers to engage with the deeper significance of objects and the layered stories they carry.

 

 

Caiyang Yin

Caiyang believes that contemporary jewellery is a material manifestation of human emotions and attitudes. When it fulfils its expressive potential, it need not conform to traditional aesthetic expectations or aim to please. Instead, it should provoke thought, stir emotion, and at times, create necessary discomfort.

This brooch playfully transforms the classic image of Polo mints into a piece of contemporary jewellery. The design mimics the object, based on the similar visual texture between white-baked silver and the white mint, with a dramatically exaggerated scale. The material is anthropomorphised, replacing the iconic "POLO" text on the mint with the line "OUCH", highlighting the characteristics of traditional press-forming techniques.

 

 

Chenxi Zhou

Chenxi Zhou is a contemporary jewellery artist from the University of the Arts London, exploring how objects carry memory and meaning across personal and cultural contexts. Her work reimagines everyday forms to open space for reflection beyond function and adornment.

N Carat transforms the traditional engagement ring into a large-scale ceramic object. By replacing precious metal with fragile clay and exaggerating its size, the piece questions ideas of value, gender, and social expectation—suggesting that the weight women bear in marriage often exceeds any gemstone’s worth.

 

 

Daye Kim

Daye Kim’s work explores the layered and often contradictory nature of identity. In Face Face Face, she examines how people unconsciously shift their personas depending on social context—whether with family, friends, or partners—challenging the idea of a fixed self. Drawing on a Korean proverb about the unknowability of the human heart, she critiques society’s tendency to oversimplify identity through tools like zodiac signs.

The piece uses simple geometric forms to represent the unified surface of the self, while numerous miniature faces—digitally sculpted from the artist’s own and cast in brass—are arranged within. From a distance, the work appears singular; up close, it reveals multiplicity. Through material and process, Kim creates a subtle yet powerful metaphor for the hidden complexity of human nature, inviting viewers into a deeper reflection on how we see ourselves and others.

 

 

Deniz Turan

Deniz Turan’s work builds meaning through the associations of concepts, images, materials, and colors. She seeks a quiet yet powerful, protest-driven language that resists the dominant forces shaping our sensory perception. In her open-ended, semi-controlled process, the only rule she follows is that every act of making must be thoughtful and intentional.

This piece responds to the increasing anti-democratic pressures in Turkey, reflecting on the experiences of those forced to leave their homeland. Scattered like weightless particles, they navigate the pain, fear, and uncertainty of starting over elsewhere. The work invites viewers to confront the emotional rupture of displacement, echoing the inescapable fate described in Cavafy’s poem The City.

 

 

Pauline Han

Pauline Han’s Encased is a series of five jewellery pieces that explore memory, stillness, and the fragility of holding on. Each work captures a suspended moment—emotion, thought, or absence—through quiet forms and restrained materials. From a lost watch reconstructed through gridlines to a mourning piece left intentionally open, these objects reflect on what it means to remember, to forget, and to dwell in between. Rather than preserve, Encased acknowledges the elusive nature of what we carry within.

 

 

Shaoyu Wang

Shaoyu Wang is a creative artist exploring the intersection of advanced technology, biology, and the relationship between humans and nature. Drawing from science and material research, his work merges craft and technology through nature-human collaborative processes. He envisions sustainable futures by questioning how objects can be made and unmade in more organic, time-based ways.

His project STRATUM treats objects as living witnesses to human history—layered forms shaped by both design and chance. Using a bio-inspired 3D printing method, the chair absorbs sugar and sand through heat, allowing natural growth to influence its final shape. Resembling a fossil or monument, the piece is made from local, biodegradable materials and reflects on impermanence, transformation, and our inevitable return to nature.

 

 

TaJo Studio

TaJo Studio explores the agency of materials—how matter itself can direct, disrupt, and reshape through repetition and chance. Rooted in traditional silversmithing, especially hammering, the studio engages in experimental processes that awaken a quiet vitality within silver.

Founded by two artist-metalsmiths, TaJo’s recent works reflect on time, memory, and material transformation. Sink, created during a journey from London to Yunnan, evokes tidal rhythms through a silver vessel that fills and empties like a mountain basin. Lullaby combines a weathered iron hoe with finely worked silver, inviting reflection on age, renewal, and the quiet harmony between roughness and refinement. Birth is a silver seed—simple and potent—marking the start of something yet to unfold.

 

 

Tianhui Zheng

Tianhui Zheng is a Chinese artist exploring how contemporary social phenomena shape human perception. Blending poetic expression with analytical thinking, she uses diverse media to reflect on identity, behavior, and subtle shifts in consciousness.

Her project critiques online personality tests and the stereotypes they reinforce. By translating test results into physical materials, she invites participants to confront the ways we label ourselves and others in a fast-paced, data-driven world.

 

 

Wanqian Zhang

Wanqian Zhang specializes in miniature sculpture that merges traditional Chinese symbolism with fine metal craftsmanship. Focusing on ancient fire gilding techniques, her work reinterprets classical motifs to explore resilience, grace, and inner strength.

The Four Gentlemen features plum, orchid, bamboo, and chrysanthemum—each symbolizing a core virtue in Chinese culture. Sculpted in brass and finished with 24K gold using the traditional fire gilding method, the pieces evoke a rich, time-worn glow. As feng shui objects, they carry both aesthetic and spiritual weight, bridging ancient values with contemporary form. In the context of Unanchored Crafting, Zhang reflects on how deeply rooted cultural symbols shift meaning as they move across time and space.

 

 

Wanyan Wu

Wanyan Wu is a Chinese jewellery designer who graduated from the Birmingham School of Jewellery in 2023. Her practice centers on narrative jewellery, blending 3D modeling, enameling, and lampworking to bridge traditional craft with contemporary techniques.

Her project Candy Boxes draws from childhood memories of sweets—both their joy and the pain of tooth decay. Inspired by the concept of Pic 'N' Mix, the work invites playful audience interaction, allowing viewers to select candy types, colors, and configurations. Each handcrafted candy gem is housed in a silver box or strung as beads, transforming nostalgia into a personalized jewellery experience. The lidded design allows memories to be “unlocked” with each opening, turning wearers into co-creators of their own stories.

 

 

Weihang Zhu

Weihang Zhu is a London-based visual artist and digital media designer. A graduate of the Royal College of Art’s Visual Communication program, her interdisciplinary practice explores existentialism, absurdism, and self-cognition. Through abstract imagery and immersive forms, she examines how the body mediates identity and how personal experiences of death, desire, and disintegration shape our sense of self.

This work was created during a period of deep psychological pain. Rooted in existential thought, it reflects on alienation as a kind of spiritual death—numb, quiet, and enduring. Serving as both a monument and a mirror, the piece offers space to commemorate suffering while questioning how identity is continually reconstructed through pain.

 

 

Weixin Huang

Weixin Huang creates narrative-driven jewellery rooted in fantasy, secrecy, and the quiet tension of the unknowable. Using vibrant cloisonné enamel, layered structures, and traditional metalsmithing, her work explores intimacy, absurdity, and the boundaries between inner and outer worlds.

These two copper-based enamel pieces—a locket and a brooch—emerge from an imagined universe inhabited by surreal characters: a solitary teddy bear in orbit, and a centaur-like figure of unclear origin. Rich in color and symbolic detail, both pieces invite touch and transformation. The locket opens to reveal a cloisonné price tag, disrupting the illusion with a trace of reality; the brooch’s rotating layers invite dynamic interaction. Together, they explore wearable fiction—blurring fantasy and objecthood, narrative and form.

 

 

Xinyu Meng

Xinyu Meng is a graphic and communication designer whose practice blends aesthetics with purpose. Inspired by early volunteer work with autistic children, she explores socially conscious design across print and digital media. Her work reflects a strong command of visual tools and a commitment to using design for meaningful change.

This project critiques the aesthetic homogenization brought on by the internet, drawing a parallel to The Peach Blossom Spring—a literary utopia isolated from the outside world. Meng likens digital echo chambers to such isolated realms: visually cohesive but detached from diverse cultural discourse. To express this, she created a hand-illustrated scroll using cyanotype printing, digital processing, and classical Chinese mounting techniques, merging traditional form with contemporary critique.

 

 

Yang Lu

Yang Lu’s practice is grounded in craft, process, and lived experience. Her work reflects both the making journey and her personal growth as an artist, combining the tactile, the narrative, and the emotional into intimate objects.

Little Monster is a playful, wearable box that visualizes shifting emotions. Its reversible lid reveals different emotional states and can be worn as a brooch—inviting interaction, reflection, and quiet self-expression.

 

 

Yanan He

Yanan He is a jewellery artist whose work reinterprets the structural beauty of traditional Chinese architecture into wearable forms. A graduate of the Glasgow School of Art, she draws inspiration from ornamental brackets, brick patterns, and symmetrical layouts, translating these elements into contemporary designs using oxidized silver, gold foil, and enamel.

Her collection Memory transforms monumental architectural motifs into delicate brooches and necklaces. Through hand-carved wax, lost-wax casting, and layered compositions, she evokes the rhythm and texture of historic roof tiles. Subtle gold accents echo the gilded eaves of ancient buildings, while clean lines and wearable forms bring a sense of modernity. Awarded the Richard Hubbard Arroll Memorial Prize in 2012, the collection reflects a dialogue between strength and fragility, tradition and innovation.

 

 

Youyang Zhao

Youyang Zhao is a London-based metal artist specializing in handcrafted vessels that merge traditional techniques with contemporary sensibility. Working primarily with copper, silver, and natural lacquer, he explores the expressive potential of metal through hammering, patination, and surface refinement.

His works highlight the quiet beauty of impermanence and contrast. One lacquered copper vessel reveals a deep, polished sheen that evolves over time with a soft patina, while a sake set plays with the tension between curves and lines, copper and silver—embodying a minimalist harmony shaped by opposites.

 

 

Yujie Liu

Yujie Liu is a jewellery artist whose practice blends personal narrative with innovation, integrating technologies like 3D printing and laser welding into emotionally resonant designs. Her work explores jewellery as a form of healing, rooted in both memory and material.

Her collection Halcyon reflects on loss, protection, and transformation. Inspired by her grandfather’s favorite bird and a traditional Chinese funeral ceremony, each piece serves as a vessel of comfort. Crafted from silver and titanium, the jewellery responds to movement with gentle sound, while shifting colors in titanium symbolize change. Through form, sound, and symbolism, Halcyon offers a quiet tribute to the passage of time and the healing power of connection.

 

 

Özlem Böge

Özlem Böge is a silversmith whose work merges traditional techniques with experimental surface textures inspired by the raw beauty of the Mediterranean coast. After graduating from Dokuz Eylül University in İzmir, she founded her own studio, where she continues to explore form, emotion, and material through metal. In response to today’s digitally connected world, she integrates methods accessed through online platforms—reflecting on how craftsmanship, once rooted in place, now circulates globally. Her jewellery navigates the space between the handmade and the digital, local tradition and global exchange.

 

 

qīqíqǐqì Studio

(Miao Tan & Siying Cui)

qīqíqǐqì Studio is an experimental practice led by artists Miao and Siying, exploring the material and performative qualities of natural lacquer in combination with fibre-based media. The studio’s name—derived from the phrase “漆奇岂器” (“Is lacquer only for objects?”)—challenges the traditional view of lacquer as merely decorative or functional, instead positioning it as a medium of expression and presence.

Working with raw lacquer and ultra-thin linen, each piece undergoes an intensive two-month process involving sewing, shaping, layering, and polishing. Though visually weighty, the works are unexpectedly light, questioning assumptions and creating moments of tactile dissonance. Through folds, textures, and material intensity, the studio invites viewers to slow down, reconnect with the physical world, and rediscover the body’s role in sensing, shaping, and existing. In a time of smooth screens and disappearing traces, qīqíqǐqì insists on friction, vulnerability, and being fully present.

 

 

Siqi Huang

Siqi Huang holds a bachelor’s degree in Metalworking Jewellery from Nanjing University of the Arts and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Ceramic Art at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai University. Her interdisciplinary practice explores the dialogue between metal and clay, balancing structural precision with material sensitivity.

 

 

Yuxuan Lin

Yuxuan Lin is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Jewelry and Metal at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, with a research focus on tactile experience in jewellery. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Arts and Crafts from the Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts, specializing in ceramics and glass.

Her work Show Yourself explores the tension between self-perception and societal ideals of perfection. Using a mirror as both material and metaphor, the piece invites wearers to reflect on their perceived imperfections, turning moments of self-examination into acts of adornment. By adjusting the posture of the hands to align pearls with their reflection, the wearer transforms a simple gesture into a quiet, intimate dialogue between the inner self and outward gaze.

 

 

Yuanyuan Yu

Yuanyuan Yu uses metal weaving as a creative language to explore the tension between presence and absence. Through semi-transparent forms, off-line draping, and the interplay of softness and rigidity, she transforms jewellery into an extension of the body—where absence becomes tactile.

Her work combines enamel, seemingly soft yet hard, with wire, seemingly rigid yet pliable, to express the blurred boundary between materials. This "threshold space" evokes a sense of transition and entanglement—where form, material, and body exist in a state of in-between.

 

 

Rui Gao

Rui Gao creates narrative jewellery that bridges personal and collective memory through material and symbol. Influenced by narrative therapy, she transforms childhood objects and textures into wearable stories, inviting emotional connection and healing through touch and interaction.

Her work Paradise recalls the disappearing brick patterns of shared urban childhoods—public squares, street corners, fleeting moments of joy. Crafted in felt, the familiar becomes strange, evoking the uncertainty of memory and the question: can we ever return to the paradise we remember, or has it always been imagined?