6 May 2026

Artist Highlight - Shane

Interview and Review

Shane is a London-based contemporary jewellery artist currently pursuing an MA in Jewellery & Metal at the Royal College of Art. Trained as a jewellery appraiser and jade carving artist, his practice bridges high craftsmanship and conceptual inquiry, focusing on Eastern cultural contexts and identity. His work has been exhibited internationally, including in London, Beijing, and Los Angeles. In this year, he just received an Award from the Goldsmiths’ Craft & Design Council. He has presented work at the Barbican Centre Conservatory, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and FORGE.

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ARTIST INTERVIEW

1. Ancestor1 brings together materials such as London soil, fragments of adornment, and textile remnants. How did you approach selecting and assembling these elements within the piece?

I approach materials as residues of movement rather than decorative choices. London soil, fragments of adornment, and textiles are understood as carriers of trajectories, each holding distinct temporal and cultural conditions. Rather than composing them into a fixed form, I compress them through a rapid, geological layering process, allowing the work to emerge as a sectional condition. In this sense, the piece operates as a material sample of my current living environment—a reflection shaped from an immigrant perspective, where identity is not represented but formed through ongoing displacement.

2. The Buddha cameo appears within a leaf-shaped pendant as a symbolic ancestral figure. What drew you to this form as a vessel for exploring lineage and memory?

The leaf is not just a natural form for me, but a way to hold ideas of time and transformation. In Buddhist contexts, the Bodhi leaf is linked to the moment of awakening, so it carries a quiet sense of memory and becoming. The Buddha cameo sits on the surface rather than inside. I see it as a kind of “pan-ancestor”—not a fixed origin, but something that is attached, carried, and reshaped through movement. If the interior holds a compressed sample of my lived environment, the outer figure reflects how ancestry is projected and continuously re-formed.

3. The interior of the pendant resembles a geological cross-section. How does this stratified structure relate to your thinking about migration and cultural sediment?

The interior resembles a geological cross-section because I understand migration as a process of sedimentation rather than a clear trajectory. Different times, memories, environments, and cultural experiences gradually accumulate and compress into layered structures. These layers do not remain clearly visible; they obscure and press against each other, becoming partially unreadable. This instability feels closer to lived experience. The interior does not present a fixed identity, but holds overlapping traces of movement, compressed into a single section.

4. You describe the materials as traces of “post-birth movement.” How do these fragments function as records of personal and cultural displacement?

I use the term “post-birth movement” to shift how I think about ancestry. Although the work is titled Ancestor, I am less interested in tracing a fixed origin than in what happens after. Cultural identity is not simply inherited, but formed through movement, environment, and lived experience. These fragments are not souvenirs of the past, but traces of what occurs in displacement—what is carried, altered, or reattached over time. In this sense, they record how ancestry continues to be shaped after birth, not only before it.

5. Your practice moves between refined craftsmanship and experimental materials. How do these contrasting approaches come together within this piece?

In this piece, I did not aim for highly refined craftsmanship. The making process is more direct and raw, as I felt this approach stayed closer to the idea of tracing ancestry. For me, each concept carries its own irreducible way of being made. In other works, I might use more controlled and precise techniques, and I welcome viewers to see those alongside this piece. Rather than working within fixed categories, I see my practice as boundless—shifting positions depending on the question, moving between making as a form of thinking, where I work more like a poet or a researcher.

6. Within The Invisible Made Visible, the work reveals hidden forces shaping lineage and identity. What aspects of these invisible histories do you hope viewers become aware of when encountering the pendant?

In this work, I hope viewers sense that the idea of the ancestor is not only something that exists before us, but something that continues to form after birth. Lineage and identity are shaped through movement, environment, and lived experience, often in ways that are not fully visible or clearly readable. These forces appear as layers, fragments, and displacements rather than complete narratives. At the same time, I hope viewers can move away from being defined by external interpretations, and begin to understand themselves—and their own ancestors—through their own reading of these conditions. Ancestor1 also marks a beginning: a first sample or archive, not a final or complete result.

FRAGMENT, SEDIMENT, AND THE SHAPING OF IDENTITY

Review by Chih-Yang Chen, Art Director

Shane’s Ancestor1 doesn’t read like a finished object in the usual sense. It feels closer to a fragment, something taken from a larger condition rather than fully resolved on its own. The pendant holds together soil, textile, and small remnants of adornment, but these materials don’t settle into a clear composition. They seem compressed, almost forced into proximity, as if the piece is capturing a moment of accumulation rather than presenting a stable form. The interior is where this becomes most evident. It resembles a cross-section, layered, dense, slightly unclear. You can sense different materials pressing against each other, but they don’t separate cleanly. This lack of clarity feels intentional. Instead of offering a readable narrative of identity or origin, the work holds onto its complexity. It suggests that these layers are not meant to be fully unpacked. The use of London soil grounds the work in a specific place, but it doesn’t act as a simple marker of location. It feels more like a trace of being somewhere, of passing through. The same applies to the other materials. They carry associations, but they don’t fix meaning. Together, they form something that sits between personal and environmental, without fully belonging to either. On the surface, the Buddha cameo introduces a different kind of presence. It’s more recognisable, more defined. But even here, it doesn’t function as a stable symbol. Positioned on the outside, it feels attached rather than embedded, something carried rather than originating from within. That distinction shifts how ancestry is understood. It becomes something that moves, rather than something fixed in the past. There’s also a noticeable shift in how the piece is made. Compared to more polished jewellery work, this feels deliberately raw. Edges are not overly refined, transitions between materials are visible. The making stays close to the idea. It doesn’t try to elevate the materials into something precious in a conventional way. That decision keeps the work grounded. What holds the piece together is not harmony, but tension. Between inside and outside, between compression and exposure, between what is visible and what remains unclear. The work doesn’t try to resolve these conditions. It allows them to exist side by side. Ancestor1 feels like a starting point rather than a conclusion. Not a fixed statement about identity, but a way of holding its shifting, layered nature in material form.