Within the Archive: Jewelry and the Poetics of Historical Trace
Fusheng Zhong
Rhode Island School of Design
Within the Archive explores how jewelry can transform historical documents into intimate bodily experiences. Drawing from Chinese classical poetry, Buddhist ideas of time, and literati traditions, I use paper, human hair, metal, ink, and clay to translate cultural memory into wearable and sculptural forms. The project centers on Li Bai’s poem Bring the Wine, whose affirmation of the present resists the anxiety produced by historical narratives. Through scrolls, vessels, embroidered cicadas, and oversized jewelry, history becomes fragile, tactile, and warm. Rather than treating the archive as fixed evidence, I approach it as material that can be carried, altered, and reimagined.
