Siqiu Zhang

Siqiu Zhang is a Chinese contemporary metal artist whose practice focuses on exploring how light, space, and time are manifested through the form of the vessel. Her works are largely composed through the density and rhythm of lines together with the flow of light, aiming to shape a poetic and concentrated sensory experience for the viewer.

Zhang studied jewellery and crafts at the School of Jewellery at Birmingham City University, the Edinburgh College of Art, and the China Academy of Art. Systematic metalwork training across the UK and China has made her particularly sensitive to structure, linearity, and material logic. She currently teaches in the International Department of Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology. This parallel engagement with teaching and making has led her to continually reflect on and refine her creative methodology, ultimately forming a distinctive artistic language of her own.

Zhang’s practice focuses on exploring the continuously generative relationships between space, line, and light. In her work, she often constructs vessel forms using countless hand-soldered silver wires. Through a highly repetitive and concentrated soldering process, she gradually accumulates lines into volumetric structures, allowing rigid metal to take on an almost silk-like sense of fluidity. She skilfully harnesses the inherent lustre of silver, making light appear as if it were contained within the vessel: light slips through the gaps between the silver wires, travels along the metal surfaces, and seems to acquire weight, slowly flowing downward under the pull of gravity. In this way, the vessel becomes a site for the movement of light.

By liberating the traditional Chinese filigree technique from a purely decorative context, Zhang innovatively transforms it into a formal narrative concerned with space and perception. Line, interspace, and light together constitute an integrated whole within her works. Through the movement of light and the shifting of space, the vessel becomes an open structure that can be considered.