Dongyi Wu: Shadows of the daylight, glimmer of the nighttime

Dongyi Wu: Shadows of the daylight, glimmer of the nighttime

February 9 – March 3, 2024

Opening Reception: Friday, February 9, 6pm-9pm

Artist Statement

This solo exhibition features the wearable artwork and sculpture by Dongyi Wu from 2016 to 2023. Dongyi has introduced a wide range of materials in her works. The colors of the materials are always one of the essential elements that she focuses on during her materials exploration. Different from most of Dongyi’s pieces with various colors, most of the works in this exhibition are presented in black. Dongyi wants to explore the meaning behind this “monotonous” color and the feelings that it may evoke. She considers black as a color with everything hidden in there rather than a color with none of the things.

This exhibition is divided into two sections. The first part is “shadows of the daylight”, which narrates a small and interesting moment in Dongyi’s life, a tired afternoon. When Dongyi took her pen and sketchbook to figure out what to do next, she was very sleepy. She felt her eyes and eyelashes became so heavy and almost falling off from her eyes. The second part is “glimmers of the nighttime”, which depicts dreams. Continuous Dreams 3 and Dream narrate a maze-like dream with crowded buildings. Access to Unknown Worlds series expresses the complexity and contradiction of emotions in the dreamland in a surreal way. The white and black bases decorated with a spiral texture seem to guide the animals to different dreamy spaces under the unknown power. Influenced by that, the animal forms are shaped to absurd and surreal images: when the zebra’s body comes to one side, the pig’s head appears on the other one.

About the Artist

Dongyi Wu (she, her) is a Chinese-born contemporary jewelry artist. Dongyi spent almost 5 years in San Antonio, TX. In 2023, She became a resident artist at Clamp Light. She is current an art-in-residence at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN. Dongyi received her Master’s Degree in Metal and Jewelry Design from Rochester Institute of Technology in the US, and her Bachelor’s Degree in Jewelry Art Design from Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology in China.

By using a wide range of unconventional materials, Dongyi creates her narrative jewelry pieces with expressive language that is inspired by literature, her own experiences, and research into psychology. Dongyi has her works shown nationally and internationally, such as Rejewelry Competition in NYC; WEAR|Contemporary Jewelry in Penland; Budapest Jewelry Week in Budapest, Hungary; CraftTexas 2022 in Houston; Schmuck 2018 in Munich, Germany. Dongyi’s work was selected as the Best in Show of Sawed, Soldered, Constructed: The Work of the Houston Metal Arts Guild in Houston, US; and she was the winner of the Preziosa Young 2020 in Florence, Italy; the finalist for the LEAP award 2019-2020 in Pittsburg, US; and the finalist for the ENJOIA’T 2017 Contemporary Jewellery Award in Barcelona, Spain.