I Enjoy the Process of Transformation, which Makes me Love Everything I'm Creating. Interview with Hairuo Ding by Klimt02

中文版 - Chinese version      

Tell us about your background. What were your first influences to be creative and become an artist and what has drawn you to contemporary jewellery?
I was obsessed with writing for years and I've always had the thought that I'd spend my life with prose and poetry. However, in the last two years of writing, when a reader asked me why your text was becoming more and more obscure, I just realized that in these years of writing, I've made myself an island, and stuck in my mind. I was wrapping myself tighter and tighter and overthinking about everything around me, making my whole body particularly pessimistic and sensitive, like even when I saw dust running in the wind, I could also fill the brain with a metaphor of thousands of words. I just firmly believed that being misunderstood was the fate of the writer. Life was so heavy that I was trapped and unable to find an exit.

After that, I chose to adapt to a new environment, then I went abroad to pursue my master's degree in contemporary jewelry. When I came into contact with contemporary jewelry and expressed these ideas more intuitively in an artistic way, I found that I was in a completely different state than before. The creation of art was a completely opposite process in comparison with writing. It's gradually moving inside from the void. When my thoughts were combined with the material, as a matter of fact, I had no words and no heavy feelings. There was only a vast white light in my mind, and the red sun sank in it.

After that, I have always had the thought that what I really need, except for those that are safe and uneventful to be old, is what contemporary art gives me, and I've been spending all my strength to suppress a small part of boiling. It is not a transition or preparation to the art path, but it means the infinite possibility of the inner plot, the endless shuttle between the primary and the ultimate, in other words, it is a lifetime for an artist's experience before he was engaged in artistic creation.


How important is networking for you in your professional practice and what are your preferred tools for this?
I'm a person who enjoys staying alone, I even once felt so sick with social interaction among people, therefore, networking is of great significance to me. I can quietly make more people access my work through the Internet, and at the same time, also have easy access to the work of other artists, and I have an interest in this efficient and intuitive communication. It's certain that there are many negative factors for the popularity of networking, for example, after making research, the influence of the absorption and browsing of a large number of works on students' aesthetics and creation can not be ignored. For my preferred tools, I mainly share my work on Instagram. 


What are your general thoughts on the contemporary jewellery world, (education, market, development...), where do you see chances, and where are dead ends?
Because I'm going to graduate this year, for me, the greatest problem that I can notice right now is a gap between contemporary jewelry and business markets. Contemporary jewelry has a small part of the audience, which has been always an existing issue. As we all know, the creation of contemporary jewelry is difficult to make a living for emerging artists in the early stage. In my years at school, I haven't been exposed to the kind of business jewelry knowledge that companies and markets need, in addition, nowadays, many companies are over-promising the market economy and losing their creativity, so that when a lot of students get into a company, they don't make things like designers, but workers. Therefore, the issue of how to go well balanced between the two sides should be the one that is faced by most students.


Thinking about your career, what role do technology and digital play in your artistic development & communication?
For me, since its birth, the concept of jewelry has been completely dependent on the human body itself. Not only is it to express the artist's ideas, but to deal with human relations and other elements to optimize. The stronger the jewelry collides, the more obvious the "contemporary" of jewelry is, as a result, the significance of contemporary jewelry creation should be not simply presented in the final product, the long production process, constant failure, numerous experiment, and innovation are all your works and a part that you echo. Therefore, it's not that I haven't tried advanced and convenient techniques, such as 3D printing or laser cutting, but makes me feel that it is incomplete for my works.


How has your work changed over the past few years and what are you excited about these days?
When I still pursued my bachelor's degree, I grew up under a very serious creation environment, for example, it's only limited to the use of metal, requirements on traditional size and wear type. It is even considered that the use of diversified materials is "showy and not substantial". Therefore, during my college life, I had little interest in jewelry but just regarded it as my class assignment. However, when I started to pursue my master's degree, it's the free creative environment in the new school that made me explore the infinite possibilities of all kinds of materials and even in my works, there was the viscera of animals, that was a lot of fun. Over the past two years, my transformation has been a lot. No matter it's my mindset or my style, I'm enjoying the process of transformation, which really makes me love everything I'm creating.