Yuxiao Zhu: The Storyteller in Matter Folklore, Memory, and Wearable Narratives.

Ancient narratives, reactivated, where images, symbols, transformation and memory intersect and respond to one another. Stories that do not truly begin, nor truly end, but continue to circulate. Everything seems to emerge from a folkloric logic. Not as reference, but as a living dynamic turned into matter.

Surface and structure are treated as one pictorial field. Together they become a containing form, shaped to receive the narrative, to give it presence, duration and density. Within this dialogue between painted surface and volume, the memory of copper enamels quietly resonates, where material, image and symbol once merged to condense a story into the object. Here, it is no longer enamel, but paint and pigmented gel. Yet the logic remains.

The narrative becomes matter. Matter becomes memory.

Walter Benjamin wrote that storytelling belongs to the realm of craft [1]. An experience shaped, worked and transmitted. The storyteller transforms lived material. And without craftsmanship, there is no tale. Perhaps this is where Yuxiao Zhu’s gesture lies. In making the storyteller reappear through matter.


In the series Theatre of Life, narrative takes the form of a cycle. Birth, transformation, passage, death. Not as a linear sequence, but as a continuum. Death has always fascinated and unsettled. It has produced rituals, images, symbols and objects. A vocabulary transmitted, reshaped and crystallised through the tradition of memento mori and carried by folklore.

What happens when ancient folklore is no longer whispered, but worn? the artist asks. What becomes of tradition when it moves from story to body, when transmission shifts yet does not disappear.
Yuxiao Zhu. Brooch: Roses and Death, 2024. Copper, gel nail polish, acrylic paint, stainless steel.

Skull, skeleton, candle, flower, mirror, coffin. Signs of remembrance, of the fragile condition of existence. Yet far from tragedy, these symbols move towards another reading. That of cycle, metamorphosis, renewal. Death does not interrupt. It transforms. Forms become protective structures of narrative. Enclosed micro-spaces. Contained worlds where beginning and ending coexist. The coffin becomes the threshold. The skeleton becomes presence. A memento mori, yes. Not to dramatise finitude, but to intensify the present.

In Twin Bloom, the mirror acts as a passage. Life and death look at one another. Presence measures its own disappearance. Something more interior emerges here. Perhaps a form of self-portrait, or rather a process of self-construction through symbols, archetypes and transformation.

The macabre dance appears in Chaos of Flesh, echoing the ancient dialogue between the living and the dead. The reaper becomes almost familiar. Colours remain vivid and dense, where symbolic violence and chromatic intensity coexist. Death does not extinguish life. It reveals it.

Yuxiao Zhu. Brooch: Chase of Flesh, 2025. Brass, copper,  acrylic paint, UV gel, stainless steel.


Yuxiao Zhu. Ring: Dazzling Birth, 2024. Copper, gel nail polish, acrylic paint, stainless steel.



Everything seems drawn from images, fragments of shared iconography, cultural residues that the artist extracts, shifts and reconfigures. In Pluck a Cherry, Yuxiao draws on a gesture borrowed from the painting Gabrielle d'Estrées et une de ses sœurs. The subtle pinch of the breast signalled pregnancy. She translates this into the act of plucking a cherry. One fruit is removed, another begins to form. The sign does not vanish but shifts, carrying its meaning across forms. Growth and decay unfold within the same cycle, echoing the persistence and transformation of shared symbolic language.
Yuxiao Zhu. Brooch: Pluck a Cherry, 2025. Copper, glass paint, silver-plated.


Then there is Bloom Amidst Ruins, created for Piece of Peace exhibition in 2025. A red poppy. In the United Kingdom, a symbol of the Remembrance Day. Memory of the dead, now widened into a shared sign for those lost in any conflicts. On the reverse, a miniature scene unfolds. Human silhouettes. Circular movement. A quiet dance of absent bodies. Front and back enter into dialogue. The object itself becomes memory.

Through these forms, folklore reappears. Not localised, but shared. Narratives transmit, transform, and change face without disappearing. Between permanence and variation, they build a moving collective memory.


Yuxiao Zhu. Brooch: Bloom Amidst Ruins​, 2025. Copper, acrylic paint, glass paint, stainless steel.


Yuxiao Zhu. Brooch: "I am Fine", 2025. Aluminium, Acrylic paint, pearl, resin, stainless steel.


Can a digital echo hold the weight of a human sigh?

A shift in register, yet the same narrative logic persists. In the newest series, Polite Meltdowns, folklore becomes contemporary, almost digital. Shared images, repeated, transformed, operate like a visual oral tradition. Anonymous, transmissible, variable, shaping identity. Where once stories travelled through speech, they now circulate through the immediacy of images.

The artist reverses the process. She materialises fleeting imagery. Non-precious materials, yet charged with another density. Faces float beneath the surface, suspended between softness and saturation. Something resists.

“I am fine.” Maintaining appearance. Containing emotion. The surface acts as a mask. Beneath it, pressure rises. Pearls hold tension. Suspension. Silence. The reverse speaks. Another image emerges. Another layer. What is shown is doubled by what is contained.

Interestingly, an artist working in a different narrative direction, yet also drawing on story-like imagery, briefly comes to mind. Aurélie Guillaume, with Une sieste au soleil, offers a suspended moment of quiet plenitude, in contrast to the emotional compression at work in Yuxiao Zhu’s series.


If Theatre of Life connected the human to the cosmic cycle, Polite Meltdowns situates it within a saturated visual present. Yet the gesture remains the same. To condense human experience into a transmissible form. The tale becomes image. The oral becomes surface.
Walter Benjamin once foresaw the disappearance of the storyteller. Perhaps we are witnessing its transformation. Between long memory and instant image, between craft and circulation, Yuxiao Zhu maintains continuity. The narrative does not disappear. It mutates, survives, and keeps speaking through matter.



[1]: Benjamin, Walter. The Storyteller. Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov. 1936. In Illuminations. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1968


Yuxiao Zhu. Brooch: “Ear Piercing Here, Right?”, 2025. Aluminium, Acrylic paint,UV gel, stainless steel.



Yuxiao Zhu is a UK-based contemporary jewellery artist working between narrative research and material practice. Building on her arts education in China and metalwork studies in the UK, her work explores how cultural symbols migrate across mythological, historical, and contemporary visual systems. Her work has been presented internationally, including the Marzee International Graduate Show (NL) and exhibitions held during Munich Jewellery Week and IX Contemporary Goldsmithing Exhibition. In 2025, she co-initiated Silent Language, a project supported by the British Council’s Connections Through Culture (CTC) grant.

Instagram: @xiaoxiao_yu2
Email: doublebubbledogs@gmail.com




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