Kina Wu. University for the Creative Arts. New Graduates 2015

University for the Creative Arts - Rochester, Kent and Surrey, United Kingdom.

Kina Wu - Jewellery and Traditional Chinese Medicine
After three years of study at UCA Rochester, my expectations for my designs have moved beyond simply conveying senses of beauty and happiness, to investigating a range of more complex emotions. I have found that people in modern society are both physically and psychologically unwell because of too much stress from competition. It was interesting to me that some traditional Chinese herbs can have a psychological healing effect for the people who struggle to get by. Therefore, my source of inspiration comes from traditional Chinese medicine, which has been developed in China and is based on a tradition of more than 2,000 years. The medicine’s special smell can create a sense of peace and comfort when boiled with water. This inspired me to think that jewellery might be also regarded as a kind of medicine for healing modern people’s anxieties and desires.
 
In order to best reflect such a theme, I decided to use various knitting yarns, felts and other textile materials for my works because of their softness. A warm, comforting feeling could be conveyed to the wearer from using these materials. I enjoyed the process of my jewellery making because it was full of sense of happiness as well as peace.
 
 
Kina’s final major project for her Bachelor Degree at UCA Rochester has investigated both the medical and the aesthetic properties of traditional Chinese Medicine. Through extensive material exploration she has sought to translate four specific emotional states; sadness, fear, confusion and anger, and the traditional medicines attached to these, in order to produce representative neckpieces of each state.  Originally from China, Kina explores how placing something familiar to her into a western context and western medical practices, changes her and others perceptions of these ancient traditions and she asks if jewellery can have restorative qualities. Kina’s work is sensitive, yet bold and her use of a variety of textile techniques is innovative and allows her to express a variety of conceptual themes, as evident from her earlier final year project ‘Getting back to Childhood’, in which she translated the exuberant qualities of children’s drawings in to a collection of jewellery. / Lina Peterson, Lecturer in Contemporary Jewellery, UCA Rochester, June 2015

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