Xiaoqi Liu

Xiaoqi Liu is a Chinese jewellery artist with a sensitive perception of materials. Her works often present a restrained state of reflection through order, which in turn gives rise to subtle emotional shifts.

Liu graduated from the London College of Fashion and the Royal College of Art, obtaining her bachelor’s and master’s degrees respectively, and currently teaches at Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology. Her cross-cultural experiences of study and work have given her a high level of self-awareness regarding material, form, and concept within the context of contemporary jewellery. Through an understanding of and experimentation with materials themselves, her practice gradually establishes a restrained formal language.

Liu’s practice often treats jewellery as a mediator between natural perception and systems of language. For example, in her brooches composed of Chinese jade and metal, she observed that many terms used to describe the texture of jade are semantically highly similar to the language people use to describe the sky. This observation led her to place jade and the sky in juxtaposition, gradually opening up a deeper inquiry into the relationship between “words” and “things.” She considers there to be a non-oppositional, elastic space between the two.

Drilling has been a recurring gesture throughout Liu’s jewellery practice. By drilling holes into jade and metal, she seeks to reach a highly rational state that pursues precision and perfection. However, in the actual making process, the inevitable instability of the human hand causes each hole to deviate from its ideal position. In this moment, an elastic space emerges between perfection as an aspired ideal and the reality in which absolute perfection cannot be achieved. The holes function not only as physical absences, but also as points of entry through which viewers may access and understand her artistic thinking.

Liu’s works explore the intermediate state between certainty and uncertainty through material, language, and gesture. Through an extremely restrained approach, she allows the beauty of ordinary things to emerge through slow and focused labour, enabling jewellery to become a vessel that carries thought and perception.