Our
Forum

On 2 March 2026, the academic forum “Contemporary Practice II: Making Meaning — Craft, Generation, and Responsibility in Contemporary Artistic Practice”, organised by the Asian Academy of Arts, was successfully held in the Centenary Room at the University of Oxford.

The forum centred on three key themes: making, generation, and responsibility, and explored how contemporary creators position their practices between historical traditions, personal experience, and global contexts. Artists and researchers from diverse cultural backgrounds were invited to share reflections on materiality, identity, structure, and visibility through keynote presentations.

The forum began with opening remarks delivered by Dr Fiona Whitehead, Head of the Internship Office at the University of Oxford and also an artistic practitioner.

Drawing on her experience in both artistic practice and cross-cultural educational collaboration, Dr Whitehead discussed the meaning carried by the act of making in contemporary practice. She emphasised that whether in education or artistic creation, making has never been merely a technical act; it is a process involving choices, responsibilities, and value judgments.

Dr Whitehead also noted that the University of Oxford has long maintained internship and collaborative programmes with China and other regions. Students’ experiences working across cultural contexts allow them not only to develop skills, but also to learn how to work, listen, and understand within different historical and cultural frameworks. In her view, these experiences closely mirror the challenges faced in contemporary artistic practice.

She further highlighted that in an ever-changing global environment, discussions surrounding tradition, authorship, sustainability, and cultural representation have become an integral part of everyday practice. Artists, curators, and educators alike must continuously negotiate the balance between inheritance and innovation.

Dr Whitehead concluded by expressing her appreciation for the Asian Academy of Arts’ ongoing efforts in fostering cross-cultural artistic exchange, and she looked forward to the discussions of the forum bringing new perspectives to the audience.

Lu Ying is a jewellery artist and designer, and the founder of Oriental Naturalism Jewelry. She advocates the idea of “designing for the future”, has developed the “Nouveau Deco” aesthetic system, and pioneered a 1668°C titanium forging technique, integrating French craft traditions with Eastern aesthetic structures.

In her presentation, Lu Ying examined the relationship between jewellery, identity, and making, discussing how jewellery—long categorised as an “applied art”—can be reconsidered within the framework of contemporary art. She noted that within the historical narrative of modernism, the separation between craft and fine art often placed jewellery in a marginal position. Yet this hierarchy itself is historically constructed. As an art form most intimately connected to the body, jewellery in fact embodies the ideal of integrating art and life.

Referencing sociologist Richard Sennett’s argument in The Craftsman that “making is thinking,” she emphasised that making is not simply the execution of technique but a process through which thinking itself is generated. Through reflections on her own titanium-based practice, she described how the dialogue between hand, material, and time produces a form of embodied knowledge.

In an era increasingly defined by digitalisation and automation, she argued that handmaking is not a rejection of technology, but rather an affirmation of human attention and responsibility. Making, in her view, represents a slow practice, a response to the logic of efficiency and a way of engaging deeply with the material world.

Addressing questions of identity, Lu Ying suggested that misreading within cross-cultural contexts should not be considered a failure, but rather part of the process through which meaning emerges. Rather than simplifying her work through cultural translation, she allows viewers to form their own interpretations through encounter.

She concluded by proposing that thinking through material may represent an important future direction for jewellery practice, one in which concrete materials and bodily experience allow making itself to become a carrier of thought.