Chuhan’s Xiao practice challenges the conventional boundaries of jewellery, shifting it from ornamentation into intimate sculpture. Her work explores self-identity and memory, asking how the body can become a site of emotional resonance and personal narrative. Through her designs, she invites the wearer to imprint their own narratives and emotions onto the work. Chuhan is drawn to the traces we leave behind: how touch, time, and memory linger in form.

For Chuhan, memory is always blurry and unstable. It is not fixed. Over time, it begins to blur, distort, and even reconstruct itself. Memory becomes a combination of truth and fiction, shaped by time and emotion. Through fragmented layers, blurred textures, and dynamic forms, Chuhan explores its fluidity, fragility, and the elusive boundary between reality and distortion. In her design system, she frames the body as both vessel and memory site, where inner emotion takes physical shape. Through tactile contrasts of softness and rigidity, her work becomes a meditation on what it means to remember, and how jewellery can hold what words often cannot.

Everything starts with the film negatives

Chuhan chose the film negative as the starting point for her exploration of memory. As a medium, film has a direct connection to recollection. Negatives are traces left by exposure to light, yet when revisited, they also become records of events and emotions. By connecting film negatives with metal crochet, Chuhan establishes the base tone of this series.

The three initial vessels she created are a direct translation of this logic. The vessel on the left contains the strongest narrative tension: a timeline is structurally woven with film negatives taken on the same day. At the bottom, the loose connection of metal crochet represents memories that are vague or fading. As the structure moves upward, the crochet becomes tighter, suggesting clearer and more vivid memories, as if the impressions that have not yet faded are trying to maintain their own shape. The other two vessels imitate more traditional and recognisable vessel forms.

The spectrum between aphantasia and hyperamnesia

The series Echoes in the Blur is also influenced by studies of the difference between “aphantasia” and “hyperphantasia,” as well as discussions of the “pseudo-time arrow” mechanism in neuroscience, in which the brain cuts the continuous flow of time into fragments. Memory, like a single frame on a negative, selectively retains core moments rather than offering a complete record.

Together, these ideas point to the same essential truth: the way memory is stored varies from person to person. Memory can be interpreted in different ways. It is never an exact objective fact, but a subjective construction, reorganisation, and even deformation. Some people experience memory as flat and almost imageless; others live with a three-dimensional, realistic, and colourful inner theatre. Most people exist somewhere between these two extremes. This suggests that memory is not simply a record of the past, but something continuously shifted, distorted, and reshaped.

This framework informs the spatial language of Chuhan’s work, moving between flatness, three-dimensionality, and fluid transitions between the two. Archive of Echoes was inspired by this movement between dimensions. Using a photograph from Chuhan’s childhood, the image is transformed into a mosaic-like composition and separated into six layers based on depth of field. Each layer is laser-engraved onto a different sheet of acrylic. When the layers are stacked together, they complete the full memory of the event, a memory that only the person who experienced it can fully recognise and understand. When the treasure box is closed, the memories are compressed and stored away like flat sheets; when opened, these fragmented slices transform into three-dimensional form and are revealed.

Weaving as a methodology

I believe when people are born, we’re like an empty vessel, through time, memory develops and intertwines together just like knitting or beading. By combining the pieces with these crafting techniques, I create a structure that is both rigid and soft, symbolizing the resilience of memory and the complexity of its emotions.

If memories are fragments, Chuhan’s practice explores how these fragments can be connected. The accumulation of memory resembles the process of weaving or beading. Each memory is an independent piece, but over time, these pieces build up to form the self. In this context, stitch and thread become symbols of connection, individuality, and continuity.

Chuhan developed a pattern that integrates knitted structure with frosted glass pieces. Each glass element was treated with sandblasting to create a semi-translucent texture. A single slice of mother-of-pearl is hidden among the other pieces, resembling a precious memory that blends subtly into everyday recollection. This gesture becomes a poetic way of showing how significant memories are mixed into daily life.

The piece rests naturally along the curves of the body, while its slightly heavier weight allows the wearer to physically sense the preciousness of memory.

Vessels, body and the forgotten

Blurriness is a key element of the entire series. The open cut of the bangle in Kept, but Faded suggests the motion of wrapping and unwrapping memory. The beads are made from clear quartz, dyed in gradient monochrome tones, and then sandblasted into a matte finish. This process creates a subtle gradation when the beads are embedded within the bangle, symbolising the fading of memory. The darker hues represent clearer memory fragments, while lighter tones suggest memory loss. Through this shift in colour, both viewer and wearer can sense the movement of memory through visual form.
In this way, jewellery becomes not simply something wearable, but a container.

Chuhan’s work values the fluidity of memory and its ever-changing nature. By structuring a dynamic system of memory, she turns her pieces into visual and sensory experiences. Her practice shows how contemporary jewellery has moved beyond decoration and aesthetics alone, becoming an important medium between body and spirit.