Faculty of Design

Material Art & Design

Kexin Wen

Integrated-Heart

My first wearable art piece depicts the water in the heart and the blood circulation driven by it. Considering the heart as a container with rooms, this piece consists of a heart-shaped sterling silver container with a hinge and a closure. The chassis of the container is hollow, formed by water-like rivers of silver outlining the three-dimensional shape. Inside the container are two vacuum-sealed forms with liquid, symbolizing the rooms in the heart. The container connects to vinyl tubes with liquid inside, which wrap around the body like arteries carrying blood around the body. The tubes also connect to a central water form at the back, which relates to the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of my second piece.

“Integrated is a set of wearable art jewellery created in response to the question “What is the nature of jewellery.” Jewellery is a form of spiritual and artistic expression, a way of thinking and a method to provoke cognitive understandings. Integrated expresses my understanding of the relationship between jewellery and the body. In these pieces, I use the symbol of water to represent the pieces becoming one with the body as water becomes one with the body. With its purpose of drawing connections between the object and the wearer, I use the space around the body to construct my pieces; the body is included as a second component in my work. To explore the topic of how the human body values water, my research focuses on the water cycle within the human body, looking into how the heart, the brain, and the small intestine interact with water as a nutrient to stay healthy. I visually portray these interactions by depicting water both aesthetically and in the physical properties of my materials, as sculpting metal and plastic results in the material taking on fluid properties. In addition, I incorporated actual fluid into my pieces to further develop the integration of water connections between the materials, the wearable art jewellery and the body. ”