Invited Artists. Florence Jewellery Week

Artist list

Bifei Cao, Nora Fok, Mi-Mi Moscow, Kezhen Wang, Zhenghong Wang

Bifei Cao / In Between.
“In Between is a progression after one year of exploring ideology and methodology in object making. Building contemporary narrative work around personal interpretations from past life experience from my Chinese homeland fused with recent experience in overseas.
Drawing my inspiration from wooden frame joints in ancient architecture, these objects are not represented directly, but are transformed and re-constructed with influences from the ways that ancient Chinese philosophy, Cosmology, Confucianism and Taoism shaped traditional Chinese visual culture. This methodology allowed me to create layered visual forms, structures and symbols within an ‘Eastern’ thinking that is open to a broader worldview.
Through this I hope to discover a relationship between tradition and innovation, ancient philosophy and personal experience, merging to create universal meanings within an individual expression. Composition and precision quickly capture the viewer’s eye, while the complex stories perceived through closer engagement communicate with the viewer more profoundly.”


Mi-Mi Moscow / When you are choosing jewelry you are choosing the coming Encounter.
“World is so generous that we cannot believe it.
Go and get what you want
What stops you?
The lack of ability to see the way how to do it.
The  only problem is that people don't see the way
Reality has many ways
 Jewelry (the process of making) is meditation on the ways.
Every step, every open door
In this process contains a range of other ways.
This can be compared to a tree upside down:
Leaves, branches, trunk, roots, and in the roots you find what you were looking for.
And vice versa – tree growing: you put the seed in the ground and so on and so forth
All ways lead to your goal
Process is getting satisfaction while you are moving. 
Jewelry (as a result or a final object) is a beacon, its light helps your ships to find the shore, avoid the danger to be smashed against the rocks and land safely.
The goal is to find your people.

 In Russia people say: 
"He is happy who is understood». 
But do we really need to be understood by everybody? 
Each one of us is looking for one's own way, building one's own home. 
And one is doing it in an environment one likes with people one likes. 
 
Our world is like a layer cake. 
People live in those layers where they like to live.
 Jewelry works as a magnet: 
it pulls in what you like and pushes away what you do not like.
Jewelry is a filter that lets in what you need and protects you from what you don't need.
Jewelry is a perfect compass in the Sea of Life.
 Yesterday «To be or not to be» sounds different today: «True or not true».
 Everything we do is a test of understanding.
For mi-mi moscow, Jewelry is a tool of Hypercommunication”


Kezhen Wang
“I look jewelry as  a vivid existing. It has survived through every steps of human civilization, and most important, it always change. I treat jewelry as a reflection of people’s life. I like to collect different kind of jewelry all around the world. I would like to tell the story of it. I make jewelry as a experimental behavior. I grip everything in my actual life even the imaginary world. I use every  force to shape my works. whatever if it’s handmade  or natural objects, even something like 3D print which totally artificial. After all, I do concentrate on the spiritual communication beside the  formalization of the works”


Nora Fok / Chasing Dreams.
“I follow my own instincts when I am making my jewellery pieces and I spend a lot of time looking at common objects particularly in the natural world and love to discover hidden surprises. Looking deeper I discover a weird and wonderful organic structural geometry, the packing order employed in microscopic nature and the delightful colours that come with it.
 By gathering all these ingredients just like cooking a meal I have the fun making it. When its done I have the pleasure of sharing it with others.”


Zhenghong Wang / Landscape.
“Although as Chinese contemporary artists we grew up in a modern Chinese context, we are in some degree influenced by traditional Chinese culture, including by the ideas on the landscape. On the other hand, and especially in the field of public art and art jewellery, the evolutions in contemporary Western art are equally equally. My own artwork is inspired by traditional ideas on 山水 (mountain and water), but should also be understood in the context contemporary art. Therefore, it is also necessary to understand the position of wearable art in Western art history.
The intention of my art project is exactly to search how the borders between sculpture and jewellery can be removed. The wearable objects in the landscapes should not been seen as jewellery, or a mere adornment, they are as “wearable sculptures” works of art. By wearing them, the wearer also transforms her/his own body and becomes as an individual body or landscape. Also the body of the wearer can be regarded as representing the entire cosmos.”