CANI WEAR A CHAIR?

CAN I WEAR A CHAIR?

CAN I WEAR A CHAIR?

After four years of product design training in Beijing University of Technology, when Ximeng began to explore and learn how to use jewellery to express her ideas, she started thinking about the relationship between jewellery and products, and the relationship between people and jewellery and products; how do people interact with them, and what is the difference between these interactions? Can we think of a product as a piece of jewellery? Is there a clear boundary between jewellery and products? Can jewellery and products transform each other’s identities?
For her project Can I Wear A Chair? Ximeng addresses the situation that when our lives are affected by COVID-19, we inevitably stay at home and become a sedentary people. We seem to spend more time with our furniture, especially our chairs than we do wearing jewellery. If physical contact is a requirement in the definition of jewellery, can we also use a chair as a piece of jewellery?
In the Jewellery and Metal department at the RCA, she has been exploring these questions and hoping to answer some of them through her practice. Affected by COVID-19, people were forced to stay at home for almost a year, working and studying online. She noticed that as people spent more time at home, they shifted their attention and time from jewellery and accessories to the everyday furniture they used. If interaction and contact with the body is a necessary condition for jewellery, could the chair that had the most contact with our bodies during the pandemic be considered a special piece of jewellery? Historically, chairs and jewellery have many similarities: they were symbols of power and status, and have gone through development that ranges from craft work to industrial production. Therefore, when a chair can be considered a piece of jewellery, how can one wear it? In her final year of study, Ximeng has been researching and exploring this question, and in the process she has started with three different objects: chairs, jewellery, and people, thinking and reflecting from different angles on how to handle the relationship between them, and most importantly, how to wear a chair. In terms of her work, she hopes it will be an experimental practice in which the product and jewellery boundaries are blurred. When audiences see and wear the work, they can consider the same question: can we have a new understanding of the chair and jewellery？

Work 1 : Cotton fabric, PVC filling. 120cm*40cm
Work 2 : PVC balls. 160cm, 170cm, 178cm, 190cm

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