Rituals by Yanli Duan

Artist list

Yanli Duan

To Tibet Collection
By Yanli Duan

In this series of work I want to erase the boundaries between craft, fashion and folklore and give a new perspective on what folklore is today. Based on my trip to Tibet, my collection is more than aiming at a romanticized memory of the Tibetan landscape; I try to reach out for a contemporary answer to the impact of traditional ethic culture.

The base of works in this series are formed by using Tibetan textile I have collected that represents the two ethnic minority characteristics: full-bodied color and the symbols in Tibetan religion. I also used daily materials such as resin, aluminum, LED lights, plastic toys rather than precious metal in order to achieve a stronger vitality and contemporary feature.

For me it is both exciting and agonising to see how any contemporary society is able to integrate rural and urban, nature and man-made. So I made the LEDs from bike lights, to refer to urbanization. I used plastic toy animals as visual focal point in the jewelry to highlight the importance of animals in Buddhism.