Dimensions: Women in Crafts

From village weavers to factory potters, craft women have long played a vital role in sustaining China’s craft traditions, even though few historically left their names in art history books. Today, women constitute a significant creative force in the Chinese art world. Some work through contemporary studio practice, using craft materials and methodologies to explore aesthetics, generate meanings, and for some - articulate perspectives on gender. Others operate within traditional workshop systems, where they actively engage with the social, cultural, and economic worlds around them.

This panel brings together a group of women practitioners whose works and projects reveal the many dimensions of the female domain in the Chinese craft world today: creative agency, visibility, inheritance, as well as the challenges and possibilities that shape their practices across studios, workshops, and communities. This event is associated with the display Dimensions: Contemporary Chinese Studio Crafts.

Section One: In the Studio

Xu Qun in Longquan (film by Tan Hongyu)

Xu Qun is a ceramic artist specialised in contemporary celadon ware. She is featured in Dimensions: Contemporary Chinese Studio Crafts.

Tan Hongyu is an award-winning film maker and a ceramic artist. She is featured in Dimensions: Contemporary Chinese Studio Crafts.

Dimensions: Collecting Female Voices (Li Xiaoxin)

Dr Li Xiaoxin is curator of the Chinese collections, V&A.

Ceramics, Voice, and the Feminine (Liu Xi)

Liu Xi is a contemporary artist working primarily with ceramics. She is featured in Dimensions: Contemporary Chinese Studio Crafts. 

Discussant:  Nie Xiaoyi

Dr Nie Xiaoyi is a researcher, writer, and curator. She is currently tutor in the Curating Contemporary Art programme, RCA

Section Two: In the Workshop

Gender and Embroidery: Contemporary Textile Craft Practice of Chinese Craftswomen (Zhang Shuye)

Zhang Shuye is a PhD candidate at RCA. Her research topic looks at contemporary textile craft practice in China.

In Women’s Hands: Ethnic Minority Craft and Cultural Knowledge in Southwest China (Duan Yiran)

Duan Yiran is the founder of YiCraft, a London-based studio focused on promoting traditional crafts in China’s minority ethnicities

 

Weaving ‘Her’: Women, Craft, and Place-ased Regeneration in China (Lu Chuan)

Lu Chuan is an independent researcher and curator, and co-founder of GyreCraft, a platform committed to researching and championing Chinese traditional crafts.

Discussant: Li Xiaoxin
 
 This event is supported by Tiān Foundation