OOO Exhibition

Organiser: Synonym Lab, YDMD Studio

Curator: Yanru Hu

Programme Director: Wei Mo

Venue: Alsolike Gallery

Exhibition Date: 15 July - 18 July

Private View: 15 July, 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM

OOO is a response voiced by objects themselves—an observational experiment that rejects anthropocentric narratives.

The exhibition centres around Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), challenging human-centred perspectives and repositioning objects at the core of existence and meaning. OOO proposes that objects are not passive tools awaiting interpretation, but rather agents with their own logic and vitality.

Through installations, images, sound, and material-based interventions, the exhibition invites audiences to suspend the utilitarian view of objects and explore multidimensional relationships between objects, and between objects and humans. Here, objects are no longer silent—they collide, withdraw, and respond, shaping a sensory space led by non-human entities.

We invite viewers to shift their focus from “What do I see?” to “How are objects occurring?” No explanation. No naming. No use. Let the object simply be.

Featuring Artists:

Bocen Zhou

Bocen Zhou is a London-based artist and designer, educated at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art. Her practice draws from literature, art, and cultural history to explore themes of interpersonal connection, social dynamics, and environmental sustainability. Committed to ecological ethics, Zhou works with natural and recycled materials, integrating sustainable principles into both concept and form. Her visual narratives examine the complex interrelationships between individuals, communities, and the natural world, inviting viewers to reconsider their roles and responsibilities within these systems.

The inspiration comes from dust, which is both material and infinitely close to nothingness, and is the "breath of matter". The series of works explores the boundaries between matter and spirit, order and chaos, life and death. Through the symbol of pebbles, it tells the story of the cycle of the universe and the transformation of matter, showing the romance and poetry in the life cycle of all things in the universe. 

Soil is the starting point and end point of all life, and it is the boundary in the life cycle. Pebbles are made of particles produced by cosmic explosions. These particles travel through the wind of the universe and the mountains and seas on the earth, and now meet in a pebble. From the perspective of the length of time on the earth, each pebble is a momentary encounter of the cosmic life cycle. Pebbles, such small and ordinary objects, carry the long history of the universe, which prompted me to jump out of the human-centered perspective, break away from the limitations of the individual, and see the infinite cycle of cosmic life from the perspective of pebbles.

Between the soil and the furnace, the work constructs a flow field between the order and disorder of matter in transparency and silence. Connecting the short-lived existence of individuals with the eternal cycle of the universe, using materials such as dust, soil, and glass to form a dialogue with pebbles, together constructing a narrative about the universe, time, and life, causing the audience to rethink the relationship between man, the world, and nature.

 

Daisy Brimble

Daisy Brimble is a 2025 BA Jewellery Design graduate student of Central Saint Martins. Daisy’s work is materially led, working instinctively and reacting intuitively to the properties of materials. With a material design process, Daisy works iteratively, often taking to the bench in the early design stages to allow for maximum explorative experimentation. Although Daisy’s work aims to push material boundaries, a core design principle is ensuring wearability. 

Inspirations for Daisy’s work are always deeply personal, particularly in her graduate collection ‘The Humble Needle’ Daisy was inspired by her female family members working in the fashion and textile industry.

Defined as “a slender piece of polished metal with a point at one end and a hole or eye for thread at the other,” the sewing needle is described by Abel Morrall as “one of the most useful implements in the world.” This collection offers a personal reflection on the artist’s inherited yet distanced connection to the world of textiles, shaped by the sewing traditions of her grandmother, aunt, and sister. Rather than working with fabric, she turns to the sewing needle—an object evoking the silent labour and enduring presence of women. Through repetitive forms, such as a chain of 100 needle eyes, she mirrors the meditative motion of stitching. By breaking the eye of the needle to create earring posts, she symbolically breaks with tradition. The altered object, still recognisable but stripped of function, reflects her search for identity beyond familial expectations. Set with gemstones, these once humble tools become precious, transforming critique into tribute and honouring the legacy they represent.

 

Dien Berziga

Dien Berziga, a Chinese-Italian artist based in London, weaves his multidisciplinary practice around the themes of materiality, cultural narratives, and the profound connections found in everyday life. Rooted in painting yet extending into 3D printing and the integration of found materials, Dien’s work explores individuality, value, and the intimate stories embedded in urban landscapes.

A key feature of his recent practice is the use of 3D-printed frames inspired by architectural forms encountered in daily life. These frames are not merely structural supports; they act as integral extensions of the painted narrative, bridging the divide between the handcrafted and the digital. By capturing and reinterpreting these everyday forms, Dien transforms them into intimate, cherished objects that echo the personal yet universal rhythm of urban existence.

The paintings themselves possess a tactile quality, achieved through a deliberate interplay of impasto and layered, delicate glazes. These textured surfaces become metaphorical landscapes where meanings shift and evolveinviting viewers to uncover hidden narratives and find space for their own interpretations to emerge.

 

Ekaterina Filippova

Ekaterina is an artist and maker based in Glasgow, Scotland. Her work spans across painting, sculpture and jewellery in attempt to communicate ideas that often go beyond language. Her material practice is informed by our experience of time as it relates to control and desire. Positioning velocity and acceleration as a metaphor for contemporary life allows her to interrogate themes of historicity and futurism on the level of everyday objects.   

The handler's arm acts as a pivot point for the whip, which is as a flexible lever. When the whip is swung, the energy from the arm is transferred to the whip, creating a wave-loop. As the loop's amplitude decreases, inevitable speed acceleration occurs that is now removed from the control of the human hand. It is the physics and architecture of the whip itself that create a sonic boom, cutting a vacuum through the air. The whip cracks, indifferent to the far-too-late realised consequences. 

Presented with an animal part on one side and a man-made one on the other, it is hard to tell which one is on the receiving end of the shock wave. Both parts are intertwined within the anthropomorphic structure that has the capacity to please and hurt. An ornamental support pillar quickly becomes uncanny and threatening when removed from its original context – like a rusty nail sticking out, a glass bottle held neck-down. The perpetrator and the victim become one when we consider the non-human as a parasitic facilitator of human experience.

A Scorpion, a gun, a weapon that hurts both the wearer and their environment, the tool dances on the verge of its function, desperate to strike.

 

 

Eve Lipkin

Eve Lipkin’s work explores themes of memory, familiarity, and sentimental connection, often through traditionally female mediums. Her practice incorporates a wide range of craft techniques, including sewing, embroidery, mending, crochet, printmaking, screen printing, and collage. Through these methods, she draws attention to the overlooked and unseen, emphasizing small details that might otherwise go unnoticed. Lipkin investigates the role of female identity within her practice by engaging with historically feminine forms of making—mediums that have frequently been dismissed as mere “craft.” By placing these processes at the center of her work, she challenges conventional boundaries and repositions them within the fields of Design and Fine Art.

This project explores the role of women’s unseen labor in the domestic setting through the lens of textiles. Using embroidery and traditional craft, the artist examines how women have historically used domestic objects and routines to protest, to confide, to adorn, and to express thoughts they often feel unable to articulate aloud. The dining table—ritualistic and shared, yet prepared by one—serves as a powerful metaphor for this invisible labor. Her work interrogates the distinction between expected labor and a labor of love, questioning how society values care, time, and emotional work.

 

Lexiong Ying

Lexiong Ying’s creative process is grounded in observation, emotional sensitivity, and psychological inquiry. Drawing from lived experiences, intimate encounters, and reflective analysis, Lexiong’s practice explores both personal and collective motivations. Recurring themes include emotional instability, internal conflict, spiritual resonance, non-normative lifestyles, and the evolving relationship between humans and their environments.

Through metaphor, irony, and symbol-laden imagery, Lexiong reveals latent tensions embedded in the seemingly mundane. Working across a diverse range of media—including but not limited to 3D-printed forms, experimental photography, video, and mixed media—Lexiong selects materials and processes in direct response to the conceptual needs of each piece. The work seeks to resonate with the emotional and philosophical core of contemporary life, inviting viewers to engage through their own perspectives and, in doing so, to enrich the shared experience.

 How Do You Verify That You Are You?

The Möbius strip serves as a central metaphor for this project. Appearing to have an inside and an outside, a top and a bottom, it is in fact a single continuous surface—a unity of opposites. This structure symbolises the illusion of separation, reflecting how seemingly distinct elements can form an inseparable whole.

Such duality echoes our current relationship with technology, especially the systems of authentication and verification. Technology was once intended to simplify life, yet it increasingly complicates it. Verification methods, meant to protect digital assets, now burden users with convoluted steps and endlessly growing password demands. In response, many choose to weaken their security for the sake of convenience. This tension—between safety and usability—is itself a kind of Möbius.

Plastic Human Relations

Technology has streamlined aspects of daily life, but it has also reshaped human behaviour in profound ways. Social media, as one of the most transformative innovations of the digital age, raises a critical question: does it truly bring people closer, or merely simulate connection while deepening distance or even inciting conflict?

Like many plastic products, social media appears sleek and appealing—yet it is fragile, disposable, and ultimately superficial. Beneath its glossy surface, a more complex, often troubling, picture of human interaction emerges.

 

Lili Barglowska

Lili Barglowska is a jewellery-maker driven by a commitment to working with culturally relevant natural materials. In her practice, she incorporates personally sourced elements such as stone, horn, and horsehair to reflect on both Polish and American cultural identities. Deeply passionate about material sourcing, Barglowska finds inspiration in the act of gathering materials herself and in developing a nuanced understanding of the landscapes and cultural contexts from which they originate. Her approach to jewellery-making is rooted in intuitive response and a dedication to slow, hand-driven techniques, particularly carving, which allows her to form meaningful connections between material, process, and cultural reflection.

Three pieces—a necklace, brooch, and pin—communicate the artist’s reflections on Polish and American culture. Growing up between these two cultures, she has long considered what defines cultural identity and has searched for her place within this spectrum. These three pieces explore how natural materials can reflect culture. The stones—petrified wood and obsidian—were sourced along a road trip through the United States, while the horsehair was collected from horse stables in Warsaw, Poland. By intertwining these materials, the artist uses their origins and cultural symbolism to weave them into her personal narrative.

The necklace, carved from obsidian from South Dakota and tied with horsehair from Poland, reinterprets Polish National Mourning Jewellery worn in the 19th century, when Poland was erased from the map. Such jewellery served as a collective symbol of mourning for the nation’s lost sovereignty. The brooch, carved from petrified wood from Arizona, depicts a reversed American flag, functioning as a personal symbol of her cultural identification. The eagle pin, carved from cattle bone, combines features of the eagles depicted on both the American and Polish national seals.

 

Magdalena Šťastníková

MgA. et MgA. Magdalena Šťastníková is a jewellery designer and artist whose work is characterised by abstract, organic, and fluid forms. The jewellery often extends beyond the contours of the human body into the surrounding space, with the relationship between ornament and body forming a central theme.

Magdalena creates unisex pieces that are wearable and combinable in multiple ways. By working with wax and polishing with meticulous care, Magdalena brings softness and tactility to metal, lending the work a gentle, approachable quality.

Inspired by emotions, nature, and speculative ideas, Magdalena envisions jewellery as an extension of the skin’s surface—an imaginary realm where human and natural forms merge in quiet symbiosis, inviting a deeper sense of empathy

imPlants

The imPlants collection explores the relationship between humans and plants, where touch becomes the primary mode of communication, and the skin transforms into a space for symbiosis. Jewellery in this project is imagined as fusing with the body—blurring boundaries between organism and ornament.

Set in a speculative future, imPlants envisions a world where humans and plants coexist in empathetic harmony. The jewellery evokes the image of leaves weaving between fingers or sprouting gently from the skin, offering a poetic reflection on interspecies connection.

Tender Tendrils

Inspired by the natural movements of climbing plants, Tender Tendrils draws from the spiralling forms of tendrils—delicate structures that curl around supports to anchor and grow. Mirroring this gesture, the jewellery embraces the body: rings coil around fingers, suggesting both intimacy and resilience.

In a world where connections often feel fragile, Tender Tendrils offers a tangible expression of care and quiet strength. The collection is a tribute to the gentle bonds that hold us together.

 

Marina Priyomova

Marina Priyomova’s artistic practice explores themes of neofeminism, biopolitics, self-identification, and memory. She approaches neofeminism as a pursuit of freedom through women’s perspectives, seeking to move beyond societal stereotypes and expectations. For Priyomova, the female body—understood as a timeless symbol—transcends its physicality to embody deeper ideas and emotions. It becomes a point of departure for examining women’s roles in contemporary society, their creative contributions, their awareness, and the preservation of identity.

Biopolitical concerns—including bodily autonomy, reproduction, and the boundaries between life and death—form another critical aspect of her work. These issues prompt questions about how identity is constructed outside institutional and societal frameworks.

Priyomova’s ongoing experiences with migration and shifting communities have led to personal “excavations” of her cultural roots. She views land as a keeper of memory, a vessel of tradition and values, and a conduit for transmitting knowledge into the future. Family and faith serve as protective spaces in her practice, offering refuge from external pressures. These deeply personal connections inform her vision, with her work dedicated to preserving and expressing ideas that lie beyond institutional and political influence.

Identity Ethnics is an ongoing installation project that investigates the transmission of cultural memory and its influence on the identity of women today. The work stems from a personal need to reconnect with the ancestral layers of Ukrainian culture and explore how these layers interact with the shifting realities of modern society.

The installation features porcelain forms reminiscent of simplified female figures from the Chalcolithic period — abstract, rooted in prehistoric archetypes, yet intentionally ambiguous. They are suspended in space, held by threads and metal elements, referencing both fragility and resilience. This formal language bridges thousands of years and opens a dialogue between tradition and transformation.

 

Mika Mirador-Go 

Mika Mirador-Go is a London-based jewellery designer whose practice explores themes of interactivity, storytelling, and shared experiences, often drawing inspiration from the city itself. She approaches design through a playful lens, informed by her surroundings and personal experiences. Her work places strong emphasis on touch, tactility, colour, and audience participation, inviting viewers to engage directly with the pieces and become part of the narrative.

This collection reimagines the overlooked design language of the London Underground into playful, interactive jewellery. Drawing from a year of documenting handrails, patterned seats, tiling, and signage, the artist transforms the shared experience of commuting into something personal and wearable.

Focusing on tactile elements Londoners interact with daily—such as handrails and moquettes—the pieces recreate sensory encounters through material experiments with brass, leather, and acrylic. Please Hold On To The Earrings, for instance, captures the motion of Overground handrails, turning a mundane detail into something dynamic. Colour and form are key, with sculptural references to holdpoles and moquette patterns. A Tube map-inspired bangle mimics the gesture of checking a watch to “check your route,” blending function with humour. The collection blurs the line between public design and personal adornment, offering a tribute to the city’s hidden systems and inviting new ways of seeing the everyday.

 

Minyue Hu

Minyue Hu is an interdisciplinary artist based in the UK. After completing her MA in Illustration at Kingston University, she began working with glass and fell in love with its expressive potential. Her current practice explores the material’s ability to convey fragility, memory, and transformation through narrative and tactile forms.

These glass candle sculptures are a contemplation on the state of collective memory. Glass emits a warm, orange glow during the forging process, radiating intense heat as it takes shape. Yet the moment it truly solidifies is precisely when the temperature begins to drop and the light starts to fade. These forms appear to be melting, as if still aflame—yet they are already cold. They bear the appearance of fire, but have lost all warmth. This work seeks to capture the birth of collective memory—

that fleeting moment when the event has ended, but emotion still lingers;

When language has yet to form, and memory has not yet faded.

In that ambiguous in-between, the witness struggles to leave something behind, as a form of remembrance.

 

Mulin Qiao

Mulin Qiao is an artist and curator whose practice explores themes of humanity, identity, and healing through experimental art, moving image, and reflective painting. Qiao’s work centers on the creation of narrative spaces that evoke emotional resonance and foster intimate self-awareness.

Through a multidisciplinary approach, Qiao invites viewers into contemplative experiences that bridge personal and collective understanding, engaging both emotional and introspective responses.

Talk to Me but Don’t Speak is an experimental video artwork in which the artist sits face-to-face with strangers and attempts to communicate without spoken language. Through gestures, drawing, writing, music, and other nonverbal forms, the participants explore the deep human need for connection beyond words. The work reflects the emotional isolation and expressive struggle often experienced in unfamiliar linguistic environments, inviting a return to more primal, intuitive modes of communication.

 

Roman Waughan-Williams

Roman Vaughan-Williams graduated from Newcastle University in 2020 with a BA in Fine Art. He makes artworks which map a landscape of relationships between concepts within his psyche, material forces within the external world, his psyche and the external world.

His works are often made up of juxtapositions of material; rusty iron A-frames come up against graphite-covered MDF and trompe l’oeil representations of woodgrain. 

What appears like disparate matter is drawn together into visual poems; meditations clustered around particular concerns; Marxism, Opium, De-Colonialism, Thermodynamics, irony, sincerity, Feminism. 

These poems do not explain the world but are maps in a journey of discovery: While the world continually changes, there are structures that remain through this change; it is this logic of change and transformation that Roman continually uncovers.

 

Teodora Dimitrova

Teodora is a speculative artist exploring the entanglements between humans, machines, and belief systems. Their work draws on sci-fi, media archaeology, and systems of power to construct alternative narratives that question how technology shapes contemporary rituals and structures of meaning. Through world-building, research-based practice, and immersive experiences, they create spaces where fiction and reality blur, inviting reflection on the tensions between control, faith, and agency in increasingly technological worlds.

The Orb of Fortune offers a new more scientific approach to scrying for the fortune-teller. Removed from its original purpose in weather monitoring, the heliograph’s stripes are now modified with new variables, inspired by tarot symbols. Now instead of measuring the sunshine during the day, the sun will burn through the symbolically infused imprints, revealing the fate of the user.

 

Tianhui Zheng

Tianhui Zheng is an artist from China. She graduated from the Animation programme at the Royal College of Art. She yearns to combine art with contemporary social and cultural phenomena and presents her abstract thinking from the micro perspective in distinctive visual form. Tianhui has always insisted on expanding visual association and producing works by using multiple media and materials. She enjoys combining poetic expression with objective fact analysis, exploring all interesting media flexibly and then presenting them in the final artwork. She tries to find the essence of the subtle changes in human consciousness based on time, space and daily behaviour.

Molar Moon

Molar Moon is a series of ceramic works developed from dream experience and theories of cognitive restructuring. The project originates from a dream about losing a tooth—a moment that triggered deep fears of losing control and the death of a family member. In this context, the tooth becomes a vessel of embodied memory, while the moon serves as a symbolic space for dreams—distant, cratered, and suspended at the edges of consciousness, bearing unspeakable emotional projections.

Through the transformation of ceramic textures and structural composition, the work materialises the psychological states evoked by the dream: a rough, uneven exterior reflects unresolved anxiety, while the smooth, glazed interior suggests cognitive clarity and emotional reintegration. Incorporating principles of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), the work reframes the dream’s imagined catastrophe into a tangible process of emotional recognition and containment.

As a visual artist, I am drawn to how non-linear time, internal perception, and emotional structures can be translated into concrete visual language. Molar Moon creates a tactile space where material, form, and psychological resonance converge—offering a dream that may be held, touched, and quietly inhabited.

 

Tingyan Luo

Tingyan Luo’s work is an invitation to let the object speak.

Departing from anthropocentric narratives, her practice explores how recycled materials—glass and silver once dismissed or devalued—reassert their agency through form, fracture, and presence. In reimagining jade cultural symbols, these materials are not simply reused; they re-surface, resisting utility and carrying the echo of ancestral memory on their own terms.

Her work reveals a tension between fragility and endurance, between symbolism and structure—not as evidence of human mastery, but as expressions of material autonomy. Filigree folds not to please, but to persist. Glass fractures not as flaw, but as gesture. Each piece becomes a site where matter withdraws from fixed meaning—an object in formation, not for us, but beside us.

This series resists the notion of material as a vessel for human intention. Made from recycled glass and reclaimed silver, the pieces reconstruct archetypal jade forms—such as gold-threaded burial suits and belt hooks—not to commemorate or symbolise, but simply to exist.

Fractures, cooling marks, and self-forming structures are preserved and even emphasised, allowing the object to emerge through its own agency. Filigree does not decorate, but negotiates balance. Fragility is not disguised—it asserts presence.

These works are not created for adornment. They reject functionality and meaning as imposed by the human gaze, instead echoing their own histories, energy, and logic. They do not speak to us; they resonate in the spaces where interpretation fails.

 

Wenbin Sun

Wenbin Sun is a speculative artist exploring the entangled relationships between humans, machines, and belief systems. Drawing from sci-fi, media archaeology, and power structures, his work constructs alternative narratives that question how technology informs modern rituals and meaning-making. Through research-driven world-building and immersive experiences, he creates spaces where fiction and reality blur, prompting reflection on control, faith, and agency in our algorithmic age.

Collaboration with Teodora Dimitrova, The Orb of Fortune offers a new more scientific approach to scrying for the fortune-teller. Removed from its original purpose in weather monitoring, the heliograph’s stripes are now modified with new variables, inspired by tarot symbols. Now instead of measuring the sunshine during the day, the sun will burn through the symbolically infused imprints, revealing the fate of the user.

 

Weihang Zhu

Weihang Zhu is a visual artist and digital media designer based in London. A graduate of the Visual Communication program at the Royal College of Art, her interdisciplinary work explores themes of existentialism, absurdism, and self-cognition. Her practice investigates the intersection of embodiment and identity through the lens of existential philosophy, examining how the body both shapes and reflects our understanding of the self. Drawing on philosophical ideas, she explores the dynamic relationship between the body, identity, and death. Using abstract imagery, Weihang examines how projections shape self-perception and influence our interaction with the world.

This project explores the perception of death through an existential lens. Informed by the notion that death is not the opposite of life but its defining boundary, the work reflects on mortality as a condition that shapes consciousness and presence.

The photographic diptych employs abstraction and metaphor to evoke the proximity of death in everyday existence. Grain, darkness, and layered textures serve as visual analogues for decay, memory, and the unknown. Death here is not an event, but a condition—embedded in the living, and inseparable from life itself.

 

Will Moore 

A jeweller who speaks through a mix of traditional slow craft and experimental biomaterial to narrate and celebrate introspective stories and philosophies.

“This Must Be The Place” explores the experience of becoming lost in one’s thoughts and the journey of rediscovering a sense of home within the mind. Reflecting on the mental fatigue often felt during life’s transitions—shaped by the digital age, the pandemic’s aftermath, and adult pressures—the project finds quiet value in vulnerability as a space for clarity and renewed connection.

The artist began by visualising repetitive thought patterns, inspired by Dr. Gabor Maté’s The Myth of Normal and the concept of Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs). Motifs such as ants spiralling into the head represent the exhausting cycle of anxious thinking—mirrored in the phenomenon of the “ant mill.” These ideas were translated into jewellery that gives physical form to internal emotional states.

A pivotal moment came with the rediscovery of childhood home photos, prompting reflection on memory, safety, and transformation. Drawing on Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, the artist investigated “home” as internal, material, and communal. This led to the creation of a composite material, Nestchip—formed from collected shells, plant matter, and urban fragments—evoking the way we build mental sanctuaries from our environments.

Using slow, tactile techniques like metal raising and stone carving, the final pieces embody cycles of chaos and order, loss and renewal—celebrating home not as a fixed place, but as an evolving process of grounding.

 

Yiwen Ma

Yiwen Ma graduated from the Royal College of Art. Her artistic practice engages with the dynamic entanglements between humans and the more-than-human world. Working through painting, sculpture, and installation, she seeks to evoke a sense of ecological interdependence and material agency. 

The artist thinks of these object-beings as a constellation of dynamic and static forms that open themselves to new conjunctions, drawing novel lines within space and generating pulsations and networks of becoming. They are what they are—demonstrating self-possession as a trait imbued with both possibility and uncontrollability. “They seem to have personality…” is a common response from viewers. Yet in their presence, we too become objects—standing before them, half-sensing our relationship to still stranger things.

 

Yingying Qiu

Yingying Qiu is a London-based jewellery artist who graduated from the Royal College of Art and the China Academy of Art. Yingy sees the textures of materials as metaphors for ‘skin,’ exploring the intimate, tactile dialogue between jewellery and the body, recognising jewellery’s power to truly touch.

Honoured to work with fungus and oil paint, Yingy investigates the raw textures of living matter and the material of the soul, celebrating individuality and the subtle, complex connections between singular beings.

Yingying Qiu’s work examines the nature of the primitive, fragility, transformation, and impermanence, as well as the symbiotic experience shared between individuals.

Fragments of the wing

On the Primitive, Fragility, Transformation, and Impermanence

'Fragments of the Wing' is part of the ongoing project 'Land of the Lustrous', a sculptural and art jewellery series centered on the organic properties and symbolic resonance of Auricularia (wood ear fungus). Drawing upon its delicate, skin-like texture and visceral presence, this body of work investigates the emotional and bodily connections betweden nature and identity.

In this new phase of the project, I work with dried Auricularia and white oil paint to create wing-like sculptural forms. Wings often serve as metaphors for transformation, hybridity, and the ability to transcend physical or psychological boundaries. By translating the soft, ambiguous materiality of fungi into abstracted wings, I seek to evoke the tension between groundedness and flight, vulnerability and resistance, impermanence and persistence.

These pieces exist between sculpture and adornment, object and organism. The use of natural, often overlooked materials underscores the untamable softness found in living systems—materials that grow, decay, and shift. The whitened surface, achieved through layered oil paint, neutralizes the raw, organic tones of the fungi while also referencing themes of memory, purity, and erasure.

At its core, this project explores questions of identity, bodily presence, and emotional fragility. The wing form becomes a vessel for metamorphosis—intimately tied to personal histories, cultural ambiguities, and the instinctive drive to connect and transform. As with previous iterations of Fungi, these works are intended for exhibition and curatorial contexts, where spatial relationships and sensory resonance become part of the storytelling.

 

Yewon Kim

Yewon Kim is a multidisciplinary designer based between London and Seoul. With a background in 3D modeling, motion graphics, and interactive media, she explores how technology reshapes sensory perception. Her work bridges physical and digital realms, often using AR, VR, and immersive media to create intuitive, sensory-rich experiences. Focused on the digital-ecological shift, Yewon aims to make emerging technologies accessible through thoughtful, playful, and inclusive design.

Techno Tactile Movement is a speculative design project responding to the fading presence of touch in our increasingly digital lives. As screens grow smoother and physical interaction declines, the project asks: What happens when tactility disappears from everyday experience? At its centre is Tactile Degeneration Syndrome (TDS)—a fictional condition that symbolises our growing disconnection from physical sensation. In response, the Techno Tactile Package offers a three-part sensory toolkit aimed at preserving and reawakening our sense of touch:

•Techno Tactile Kit: A set of 3D-printed objects derived from microscope scans and reimagined as amplified tactile forms using varied materials.

•Techno Tactile Archive: An interactive AR publication that re-engages the senses through motion, spatial sound, and layered visuals.

•Techno Tactile Website: A free online library of texture scans, 3D models, and displacement maps for public use.

Together, these elements invite users to reconnect with the physical world, keeping touch alive in a time of digital detachment.

 

Yujin Ok

Yujin Ok is an artist based in Seoul and London whose metalwork explores themes of connection, protection, and transformation. Grounded in craft and material investigation, she highlights often-overlooked elements in nature, particularly through casting delicate pieces of fallen tree bark. Inspired by organic forms and natural cycles, she builds a visual language that bridges materiality and emotion, creating works that are both delicate and resilient. Her sculptures form open yet protective boundaries, balancing softness and strength. These structures evoke the quiet power of nature and community, framing shifting relationships between materials, environments, and those who encounter them.

Yujin’s work explores the idea of boundaries—not as rigid divisions, but as soft, organic structures that connect, protect, and hold space. She collects fallen tree bark, then carefully cleans, dries, and casts each fragile piece into metal. This act of transformation is not merely about preserving form, but about honoring the bark’s original role in nature’s cycle of protection, decay, and renewal. Once cast, the pieces are soldered together to form new structures that function as boundaries. These open containers—without a base and exposed from above and below—are in constant dialogue with their surroundings. Their meaning and function shift depending on what surface they rest on, what they hold, or what they frame. The resulting forms suggest protection through connection—like trees sharing nutrients through their underground root systems, or ancient communities joining hands in circular rituals to express unity and collective strength. The artist sees her work as existing between vulnerability and permanence, echoing the bark’s original protective function, now reimagined in metal. She aims to create boundaries that are porous and alive—structures that hold space without excluding, allowing for coexistence rather than separation. These forms are not fixed; they grow, change, and open up new ways of relating. Through this process, the artist reflects on care, resilience, and the quiet strength of nature. Her work invites viewers to move gently across these boundaries, to share in the sense of protection they offer, and to consider new ways of being together.

 

Yuzhe Zhang

In Zoe's artistic practice, the exploration of metaphors and the intricate connections between objects and human behaviour serve as the foundation of her creative expression. She seeks to uncover the hidden meanings and symbolic relationships that exist in everyday interactions, reflecting on how our environment and the objects around us mirror our emotions, motivations, and societal roles. Building on this foundation, Zoe's jewellery moves beyond simple decoration to focus on how we interact with it. She designs pieces that highlight the relationship between the wearer and the object, emphasising the ways jewellery can connect to and influence our bodies.

The artist observes that society’s rules are omnipresent, operating like the parts of a machine, geared toward order, productivity, and control. Within this system, genuine emotions often appear unnecessary or are quietly dismissed. While positive emotions are encouraged and celebrated, negative ones are less accepted, despite both being essential to the human experience. As a result, individuals are frequently compelled to hide or suppress their true feelings in order to conform.

This collection explores the tension between emotion and reason, between positivity and negativity, and the internal conflicts that give rise to anxiety. Emphasising functionality over ornamentation, the tool-inspired jewellery and its playful, interactive elements form a kind of emotional ‘survival kit.’ Through engagement with these pieces, the wearer is invited to confront, recognise, and embrace their authentic emotions—even within society’s rigid and rational framework.

 

Zixiang Zhang

Zixiang Zhang is a London-based BioArt artist and a 2023 MA Product Design graduate from the Royal College of Art. His practice reimagines discarded materials, exploring how they transform when exposed to organic processes. By integrating hand-knitted textiles with living mycelium, he creates sculptures that evolve over time, shifting in scent, texture, and form.

Zhang’s work challenges conventional ideas of purpose and utility, highlighting the unique character of materials as they move beyond human control. By allowing nature to intervene, his pieces exist in a space between object and organism, where language falters and material becomes its own form of storytelling.

After the Remains II and Life Touches Matter are installations that explore the entanglement between industrial waste and natural regeneration through textiles and living mycelium. Centred on the philosophy of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), the works shift focus away from human narratives, instead foregrounding the agency of matter itself. Mycelium is not treated as a medium, nor textiles as symbols—instead, they are active participants that metabolise, self-organise, and act with internal logic.

The installations evoke fossilised remnants and subterranean landscapes, drawing from the way landfilled textiles become embedded underground. By embedding fabrics within mycelium, the works reveal a hidden, ongoing narrative of transformation. Mycelium decomposes, reshapes, and binds discarded materials into new forms, highlighting fungal life’s regenerative potential.

Both works challenge traditional definitions of sculpture. They are not static but living systems—growing, decaying, and reconfiguring over time. They resist fixed meaning, authorship, and human control, unfolding through the entangled forces of nature and time.

This practice seeks to decenter the human, allowing living organisms to lead. In doing so, it reveals the limitations of anthropocentric thinking and invites viewers to witness the unpredictable, unfinished, and self-directed nature of material transformation.