Thinker in Contemporary Jewellery and Metal Art — Yanan He
In the field of contemporary jewellery, one can easily observe a distinct trend: the medium increasingly leans toward pure artistic expression and has gradually become a vehicle for conceptual ideas. Jewellery exhibitions are frequently held in art museums and galleries—institutions marked by their association with the broader art world—and are often accompanied by wall labels explaining the conceptual intent behind each piece. Critics tend to interpret these works through the lens of art history and theory. In light of Arthur Danto’s theory of the “artworld,” contemporary jewellery has clearly stepped into the realm of fine art and aspires to engage in dialogue with other contemporary art forms.
However, we are already in a postmodern era, where the boundaries between artistic disciplines have been dismantled. A single artwork now commonly involves multiple media and materials, taking on diverse artistic identities. Within this context, contemporary jewellery, as a seemingly “singular” medium, often appears out of place—at odds with fine art’s emphasis on freedom in material and medium. As Norwegian craft theorist Jorunn Veiteberg has noted, craft remains burdened by external bias, particularly regarding its “functionality and material.” Thus, today’s jewellery artists face a dual challenge: not only must they consider what they want to “say” through this medium, but they must also critically reflect on why they choose this medium as a mode of expression—thereby confronting the perceived limitations of craft media head-on.
YDMD Studio is one such collective that actively engages in critical reflection on its chosen medium. As stated in the curatorial nomination text for their participation in Triple Step — Contemporary Craft Academic Nomination Exhibition:
“YDMD’s artistic practice seeks to infiltrate everyday life guerrilla-style. Their works are infused with hybridity, critique, humor, and philosophical inquiry. In their hands, traditional materials and craft techniques become tools for expressing thought and awareness, while the functional nature of objects becomes a ‘handle’ through which they subvert habitual thinking and challenge viewers' expectations…”
Thus, while YDMD’s works may appear “playful” or “light-hearted” on the surface, they are, in fact, rich with critical inquiry—particularly regarding materiality, technique, and function. As the studio’s primary creative lead, Yanan He is the conceptual driver behind this thought process. She is the one who raises fundamental questions about the medium itself and explores how art can be woven into everyday life. If other members of YDMD are responsible for letting each project take flight, Yanan holds the kite string—ensuring that even the most whimsical ideas remain grounded in deep consideration.
Under Yanan He’s creative leadership, YDMD has participated in numerous domestic and international exhibitions, including Elemental Heat (2020), Triple Step — Contemporary Craft Academic Nomination Exhibition (2022), and East Meets West — Chinese Contemporary Jewellery Group Exhibition (2022).
In Elemental Heat, YDMD presented a piece titled Open the Open. The work features a Coca-Cola bottle cap encased within an external acrylic cube. The functional part of the cap—the threading—has been relocated to the bottom of the cube, allowing it to still operate as a “cap.” However, when this square cap is screwed onto a regular Coke bottle, the original cap inside floats above the bottle, giving the illusion that the drink remains open.
This work stems from Yanan He’s reflections on fast-moving consumer goods and their relationship to domestic life. She noticed that one of YDMD’s studio partners always kept a bottle of Coca-Cola on their desk—not necessarily the same one, but there was always one there. Though disposable, the Coke bottle had become a fixture in that environment. She observed that such “fast consumer products” have silently occupied spatial roles within domestic settings. Whether surrounded by elegant silver candlesticks, antique vases, or mass-produced teapots, the Coke bottle is always present—just as Andy Warhol once said:
“Coke is Coke, and no matter how rich you are, you can’t get a better one than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.”
Inspired by this idea, He led the team in brainstorming how to reflect this new symbolic “status” of the Coke bottle. Regardless of who you are or what adorns your table, the Coke bottle occupies its own legitimate space. After multiple ideation sessions, the team landed on the bottle cap as the conceptual carrier. Hence, Open the Open marks the “place-holder” of a drink in progress—a gesture that humorously critiques how mass consumption quietly embeds itself into personal, everyday space.
Beneath its light surface lies a sharp reflection on how consumer culture shapes individual life.
Open the Open, Coca-Cola bottle cap, acrylic, private collection
In Triple Step – Academic Nomination Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Craft, YDMD presented their new series Monument, a collection of candle holders made of patinated copper, brass, and silver. Each piece centers on three core elements: a human figure, a candle, and the spatial relationship between the two.
Although all members of YDMD studied abroad, Yanan He believes this hybrid cultural background allows the studio to reflect critically on and give form to traditional Chinese philosophies. One such idea, drawn from the I Ching, posits that change is the fundamental nature of the universe. Accordingly, in the Monument series, the candle appears as a monument—but one that commemorates not a fixed or eternal image, but the very act of “burning transformation.” Likewise, the human figure resembles a monument, yet it does not glorify grandeur, but honors the fragility and impermanence of the individual in the face of time.
The Monument series invites viewers to contemplate different encounters between the human and time.
Monument Series, Silver and Copper, Private Collection
The conventional logic of craft often involves refining the form of a candle holder to achieve either aesthetic harmony or intentional tension between form and function. However, in this series, Yanan He encouraged her collaborators to approach the “candle” not simply as a utilitarian object, but as a readymade—a conceptual component. This strategy allowed the functional and the philosophical to coexist, enabling the dual expression of Dao (idea) and Qi (object).
From East to West – Contemporary Chinese Jewellery Exhibition featured YDMD’s new jewellery piece Girl with a Pearl Earring.
The work is composed of a high-resolution licensed print of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and a silver earring designed to be worn by the girl in the painting. The earring vertically stacks the Chinese characters for “珍” (precious) and “珠” (pearl), fusing typographic design with wearability. Through this intervention, the piece creates a cross-temporal dialogue between classical Western portraiture and contemporary Chinese visual language.
Girl with a Pearl Earring, Mixed Media, Collection of Bairui Art Space
Yanan He observed that as contemporary jewellery increasingly expands in scope, its core definition seems to dissolve. Can any object, by virtue of its association with the body, be called “contemporary jewellery”?
After collective discussion within YDMD, the team turned to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of “family resemblance.”This theory posits that words do not share a single essential property, but rather exhibit overlapping similarities—like members of a family resemble one another in different ways. Meaning, therefore, is not fixed, but continuously activated and extended through usage. This anti-essentialist perspective inspired the group to ask: How can contemporary jewellery remain radically innovative without severing its ties to the very lineage that defines it?
Girl with a Pearl Earring focuses on what the artists call the “peripheral relevance” of jewellery—the relational and textual contexts that surround it. Peripheral relevance, they argue, allows for boundary-pushing innovation while still maintaining a link to jewellery’s “family resemblance.” In Chinese, the idiom “字字珠玑” (each word is as precious as a pearl) reveals an inherent ambiguity between material and language. The work embraces this ambiguity, bringing together object, text, and image in a deliberately unstable relationship. The silver earring—composed of the vertically stacked Chinese characters for “precious” (珍) and “pearl” (珠)—is not simply an adornment, but a visual-textual intervention, worn by Vermeer’s painted subject as a conceptual accessory.
He’s leadership within YDMD is marked by this balance between imaginative freedom and critical rigor. Her role in the group is both mentor and catalyst, urging collaborators to speak boldly through their work while constantly returning to the core question: Why say it this way? It is under this guidance that YDMD transforms traditional materials and techniques into tools for thought and critique, breaking free from the limiting assumptions often associated with craft and ornament.
