PARIS.- Coming from the province of Anhui in the west of China, Zhou Yiyan studied art and design at the University of Shanghai, and then worked as a graphic artist for seven years before settling in Paris in 2007 to pursue her artistic studies in photography and design. she subsequently developed a collection of art objects in porcelain that are inspired by her fascination for circles in Chinese culture, and that are worn as jewellery. Each item is unique and created by the artist in a contemporary ceramics studio. Featuring glossy or matt enamel, gilded or left untreated, each piece requires a long period of design work and perfect technical mastery in order to adapt the artisanal processes of ceramics to suit the desired form.

This year, Zhou Yiyan was among the winners of the Young Creative Craftsworkers Award, which has been run by the Ateliers d’art de France since 1960 with a view to revealing new faces from the vanguard of crafts in France.

In this delicate work in porcelain, Zhou Yiyan draws many analogies with human relations. For her, the tension of the material, its resistance, and the compromises to be sought following unforeseen occurrences all amount to a double incitement: to renounce the perfect mastery of the material and recompose on the basis of the unanticipated – a reflection of her relationship to the world.

The “semi-circle” necklace is for her a way of renouncing the perfect circle, with the formal perfection it represents, while turning this failure into an asset. The missing semi-circle gives way to another material, and the composition is continued, modified and enriched. in another necklace, the young artist weaves cotton threads through the porcelain. The tension is palpable – as in the traditional chinese embroidery frames in bamboo held together by linen threads, the source of Yiyan’s inspiration.