Leah Chan - China
Leah Chan
Designer biography:
The designer graduated from the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK, majoring in fashion artefact. At the postgraduate stage, she focused on the research of organic sustainable materials, as well as the relationship between the sensory experience of handicrafts and cultural identity. At present, the designer continues to try to create with the production method of grain handicrafts she has developed. She thinks that choosing important foods and cooking is a kind of "self-metaphor" to think about the relationship between oneself and others. Constructing one's identity is a symbolic practice and value shaping process that travels through time.
Piece 1: -Lightness of Being- Necklace
Coming from China with a very developed food culture, I am interested in exploring the connection between food, perception, time and space, and memory. I think that choosing important foods and cooking is a kind of "self-metaphor" to think about the relationship between oneself and others. Constructing one's identity is a symbolic practice and value shaping process that travels through time. The material for this work comes from a handful of brown rice that has been wormed for too long. These foods have nourished my spirit and my flesh for over 20 years; If the soul has form, I believe that an important component of it is definitely grain; Transcendence for me is related to letting go of one's own sins; The expired and inedible food is because of my laziness and forgetfulness. In my life, I have too many regrets and unwillingness due to the above two reasons. At the end of many stories, they have become an unbearable sense of alienation in my life. They are the coldness in my soul.
Piece 2: Avalokiteśvara
The theme of the work is about religion, technology, food and love; the title of the work "Guanyin" has two meanings, the first one is the author's guidance of the Buddhist Guanyin Bodhisattva's "seeing the emptiness of the five skandhas, and eliminating the suffering of all the doom" for the contemporary times, and the second one is to reflect the author's stories and voices that he has observed in his one life; The author creates a stone statue of Guanyin with a dislocated face by laying food powder on a 3d-printed remnant model of Guanyin, symbolising the deconstruction and reshaping of traditional religious culture in the context of the rapid development of science and technology, where the food powder consists of rice and a variety of traditional Chinese medicines, which symbolise her mother's care for her diet across time, space and geography; in addition, the author attempts to use traditional cloisonné as the basis for a contemporary guide. In addition, the author attempts to explore the possibility of reapplying traditional craftsmanship in a contemporary jewellery environment by using traditional cloisonné (enamel) techniques to recreate a part of the Water-Moon Goddess of Mercy statue from the Fahai Temple in the Ming Dynasty. In addition, some of the ingredients for the food come from a kind of Chinese pastry that the author has been taking for a long time to treat the spleen and stomach. Growing up with stomach problems, the author's mother was always very concerned about her diet, and while she visited many traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, she also researched and studied medicinal food. Since she left home to study and work, the author's mother would always send the author all kinds of soups or prepared herbal powders for his daily meals, and the taste of these ingredients and the memory of them always invisibly made the author feel a kind of warmth from his mother that transcends time, space and place.
