Rui Ding

Rui Ding is a jewellery designer and artist from China. She graduated from Tsinghua University with a Bachelor's degree in Visual Communication Design. After her BA studies, she was interested in the mutual transformation of two to three-dimensional space, so she transferred to study jewellery. Influenced by conceptual art jewellery, most of her work focuses on expressing the impact of invisible connections and negative spaces on the perception of the world. At the same time, her work also includes her view of how people observe the relationship between themselves and the world through contemporary media and vision.

Seeing, smelling, feeling, these figurative presences dominate the world of perception on a daily basis. When a physical connection is produced it can be perceived as a real existence. And those negative spaces, lost or abandoned objects, emptiness and blank assumptions, seem to be excluded from the consensus world of perception, and exist only as a certain concept, self-contained, without power.

However, does absence really exist only in the conceptual world, can it exist as an object, and can it have the same power and potential as the things present? Jewellery always appears on people's bodies as a symbol of a wearing relationship, representing eternal memory. The appearance of jewellery and its meaning will always be up for discussion; its disappearance, whether it is stolen, thrown away or hidden, implies a kind of avoidance and negative meaning. The absence of objects makes their stories disappear in real space. Absences seem to have never been treated fairly: they are hidden, better to disappear without a trace. In her creative practice, Rui tries to address the way in which the ‘lost’ or "absence" affects the living space, exploring the power of jewellery that has been lost by inviting the audience to participate. In this way, the presence and absence of jewellery is discussed as equally important to wearing it and losing it.