Zhihan Liu

Zhihan Liu’s vessel works present a vivid personal language and a clear sense of regional perception through their strong and direct chromatic impact. Her practice embraces intense and immediate visual experience, allowing vessels to become carriers of emotion and energy. In her work, through the juxtaposition of colour, structure, and material, the vessel becomes a site capable of holding sensation and narrative.

Liu received systematic training in metal craft at Konkuk University and Seoul National University in South Korea, and later studied in the Intangible Cultural Heritage Inheritance Training Program at Tsinghua University. She was subsequently appointed to the Metal and Jewellery Studio of the School of Urban Design at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and founded her own jewellery brand, JEEHAM-YOO. Her long-term experience of studying, teaching, and practising across South Korea and China has allowed her work to develop a distinctive personal character.

Metal mesh structures consistently run through Liu’s practice. Her work explores how one-dimensional lines can become three-dimensional vessels through folding and weaving. She fills the gaps within metal mesh structures with Chinese lacquer, handling copper wire and lacquer in an almost wild manner, preserving the lacquer’s accumulation, flow, and uneven states. By doing so, she deliberately breaks with the conventional perception of lacquer art as “meticulously refined” and “highly regulated,” allowing lacquer to re-emerge in a raw and powerful form.

By juxtaposing metal mesh structures with Chinese lacquer, Liu establishes a tension between craft tradition and contemporary expression. Through the collision of structure, colour, and material, her works generate an open and vital state. The vessels she creates become carriers of regional experience, personal emotion, and reflection, responding to the contemporary context through a strong visual language.