Jewelry Artist Lu Ying Speaks at Oxford Contemporary Practice Forum

2026-03-02 Editor

Oxford, England, March 2, 2026 — Steven Zhao, Canada & World Report — On March 2, 2026, the academic forum “Contemporary Practice II: Creating Meaning — Craft, Making and Responsibility in Contemporary Art Practice” was successfully held at the Centenary Room, University of Oxford.

The forum centred on the themes of “making” and “responsibility,” exploring how contemporary creators position their practices between historical traditions, personal experience, and a global cultural context. The forum opened with welcoming remarks by Dr. Fiona Whitehead, Head of the Internship Office at the University of Oxford.

Dr. Fiona Whitehead, Head of the Internship Office at the University of Oxford

Artists and researchers from diverse cultural backgrounds were invited to deliver keynote presentations. Among them, jewelry artist and designer Lu Ying was featured as one of the principal speakers, presenting a lecture titled “Jewelry, Identity, and the Act of Making.”

Lu Ying: Jewelry, Identity, and the Act of Making

Lu Ying is a jewelry artist and designer and the founder of Oriental Naturalism Jewelry. She advocates the concept of “designing for the future” and has developed the aesthetic framework of “Nouveau Deco.”

Through her research into a 1,668°C titanium forging technique, Lu integrates the traditions of French craftsmanship with Eastern aesthetic structures, establishing a distinctive expressive language within the field of contemporary jewelry.

In her Oxford lecture, Lu approached the topic through three interconnected dimensions: jewelry, identity, and making. She examined how jewelry—long classified within the category of “applied arts”—can regain theoretical and practical significance within contemporary art discourse.

Jewelry artist and designer Lu Ying

Lu noted that within the historical framework of modernism, the separation between craft and fine art positioned jewelry at the margins of the art world. Yet this hierarchy, she argued, is itself a historical construct.

As one of the art forms most closely connected to the human body, jewelry naturally blurs the boundary between art and life, allowing making to become a bridge between conceptual thinking and everyday experience.

During the lecture, she referenced sociologist Richard Sennett and his idea from the book The Craftsman that “making is thinking.” She emphasised that making is not merely technical execution but a process through which thought itself is generated.

Drawing on her own titanium-based practice, Lu discussed how the interaction between hand, material, and time forms a type of embodied knowledge, and how sustained experimentation can lead to the evolution of new material languages.

At a time when digitalisation and automation continue to accelerate, Lu argued that handmaking is not a rejection of technology but rather an affirmation of human attention and responsibility. Making represents a slower form of practice—one that resists the logic of pure efficiency and enables artists to maintain deeper engagement with the material world.

Jewelry artist and designer Lu Ying

Addressing questions of identity, she further suggested that within cross-cultural contexts, misinterpretation should not be seen as failure but as part of the process through which meaning emerges. Rather than simplifying her work through cultural labelling or explanatory translation, she prefers to preserve its complexity, allowing viewers to develop their own interpretive pathways through encounters with material and form.

In closing, Lu proposed that “thinking through material” may represent an important direction for contemporary jewelry practice—one in which material, bodily experience, and time become vehicles for thought rather than merely decorative elements.

Her presentation not only responded to the forum’s themes of making and responsibility but also offered new perspectives on the position of jewelry within the broader system of contemporary art.

Contemporary Practice Series II
Creating Meaning — Craft, Making and Responsibility in Contemporary Art Practice

Date: 2 March 2026
Venue: Centenary Room, University of Oxford
Organiser: Asian Academy of Arts

Media Contact:
Steven Zhao
Canada & World Report
zhao@canadanewsreport.com

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