Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. BA Degree Show 2023

Shunxin Chen

It's not a feeling of missing someone or a place, or a meeting or a morning, it's a very vague kind of feeling that comes from being in a familiar environment. As I am now in a different culture environment, I subconsciously look for similar elements around me to complement this feeling.
The whole project is built on such emotions. 
I chose to make the plastic packaging of mandarins into jewellery. This is both a reflection and distillation of the culture of hometown, as well as an integration and re-creation of the culture in a different context.
Sometimes people describe life in a foreign country in their mother tongue, sometimes they tell the story of their homeland in a foreign language. Cultural differences and interculturality are very grand themes. I tend to present them from a more intimate perspective. For this reason, the whole project seems to be closely related to food culture. After all, life is just three meals and a bed. The simplest wish is to eat and drink well wherever you are.

It could not be otherwise, she could not stay all her life in front of me, taking my place, my life, and using it as her own.
And maybe Martina never even existed, maybe she was just a reflection of what you wanted her to be.
How she died you might wonder, well suicide, sort of.
She wanted to kill herself, I just helped.
I’m the result of her death and the cause.
I’ve always been with her, but I’ve never been her.
All I had to do was die a little, to survive.
But while she died, they were born.
I reborn.
I decided to take that body that never belonged to me and make it mine.
Now I can finally be what I’ve always wanted.
Look like I always dreamed.
Martina has died,
but Miks is born,
and they are not going to leave.