Spot the Designer - Dian Chen/ UK

What did you want to be when you were a child?

When I was a child, I didn’t have much of concept of things like career. But I became very interested in making new things through existing items. I lived in a rural area in Southern China when I was a child. Children like me, at that time, didn’t normally have much toys to play with, so I had to improvise with whatever I got. It could be a bottle cap, or some colorful candy wraps, and things from the farm, rivers and woods of course, and I tried to make “beautiful” things and sometimes, to wear them, as if they were my treasure. I didn’t have the concept of design or making or jewelry or anything serious like that, but just followed my instinct to “decorate” my doll and myself, and I wished, that one day, I could make more beautiful things to wear. So it can be said that I started to like jewelry without even knowing the concept of it since my childhood’s play.

When have you started creating jewelry? How did this passion come about?

If it counts, I think my little creations when I was a child were jewelry. I think it’s very important for me to have curiosity and a high degree of freedom to play around and to explore.  Such freedom was partly a result of scarcity – I don’t have things like a manufactured toy or a video game to play, so I am free from the very limiting specific rules and goals in an adult designed game. In addition, I think my interest in jewelry was not prompted, but more like discovered. I wish every child would have the chance to wander and explore, and to find their interest from the bottom of their heart.

What was your first project or significant piece for you and from what point of view?

It was in 2014, I have graduated from my BA in jewelry design in China, and started to practice by myself. I wanted to study abroad pursuing a MA degree, but my family friends and relatives were saying “ you are a girl, you should get married before you get old. And like, “have a high degree will make you unpopular, guys don’t like his girlfriend have higher degrees than him.” On the contrary, they encourage my male cousins to “go abroad to see more” and to “learn more” and to “achieve a better career”. I realized and sadly, felt the difference about social gender in my culture and how unfair and restraining it can be. I began to look into what people say differently about how a girl should behave and how a boy should behave, and I made large pieces, like springs that claps the wearer’s legs or a metal piece that shape the wearer’s hands, to force the body in an “elegant lady’s way. It was direct, nearly brutal project, but I appreciate that edge of anger in my motivation. It also forged my interest in terms of gender and equality issues.

How do you charge your batteries? What other passions and creative interests do you have?

When I started studying jewelry design, during my BA degree, back in China. It’s more about gems, metals, technical aspect of making, how to draw design graphs and so on. I still think those things, though basic, are very useful when it comes to design. It’s like knowing the words and grammar when you speak. Then, as my practice went on, it became less to use jewelry to express or to represent, but more to explore things that I am not clear about, it’s more like trying to sing a non-specific song, or to write a poem, where you really want to push the medium or the concept to its limit, or better beyond its limit and to see what’s there, and also how to reposition myself accordingly. I believe that certain knowledge and skills in relation to traditional jewelry design and making enables me to know my materials, and the politics attached to the industry and make use of them critically in my contemporary projects. My current experimental pieces in turn, reactivated such materials and process with contemporary conditions and potentials of higher degree of freedom.

Is there a self-portrait piece that speaks most about you?

I felt that all my design speaks for certain aspect of who I am, what I care about and what I want to know. For me, designing and making jewelry is a way of exploring rather than a way of expressing what I have already thought through. So I didn’t try to translate those concepts into objects, to think-feel those topics in a material way, and also to constantly position myself in relation to them. In this process, reading, drawing, making, wearing, watching, thinking, feeling and trusting my gut all play important parts, it’s like: what if I make it twist? What if I add more onto it, how does it look, how does it feel? So I don’t pre-set what I am going to make, but the design and making will lead. I enjoy working this way, it excites me and always refreshes my perception, and such process is my very important way to not only understand those topics, but to engage with them with my hands and body.

Which material have you not yet used is a temptation and a challenge for you?

I am now working on the idea of combining industrial materials and things from the nature. A piece of wood, a broken branch, an interesting unknown stone from the river bank, or leaves, grass, or sheds of my dog. I want to keep the way they are, and try not to alter the shape, weight, texture or other things about them, but to work the other way around, to make the man-made part suit them.

How was the pandemic period for you as a jewelry designer?

I think the pandemic changed everyone. For me, it made me to think about the idea of connections, my relationship with others, with the environment and with the future me. As a jewelry designer, I began to think less about control and certainty, but ways to invite elements in.

How do you see the future of contemporary jewelry?

I think contemporary jewelry sits in an interesting grey area. It has the bodily aspect on one hand, it is intimate, it connects to the skin, we can feel it and it coordinates with our movements; while on the other hand, it is a foreign object to the body, so it can be easily separated from the body or being changed. Moreover, unlike garments, jewelry pieces are normally non-functional wearables, so it doesn’t subject to functions. In other words, to wear a piece of jewelry, you mean to wear that piece of jewelry, not because you are cold or anything, and people other than the wearer will see your decisions that way. All these, make jewelry a highly intertwined interface between both the material world and abstract concepts and the body, the physical body, the affective body and the social body (identity).

The most interesting aspect of these is the materiality of such “interface”, that we can feel, and touch and to make it as if it’s part of the body. In addition, you don’t need to represent something, you can just “be” it, though partly.

Find more about the designer Dian Chen