Photo Credit: Lin Wang
Artist Statement
With a background in both fashion and jewelry, Dongyi’s creations are deeply rooted in fashion, art, and craft. In her practice, she continually explores the integration of these three fields while challenging the boundaries among them. The cross-discipline practice has shaped Dongyi’s work. Her wearable artworks combine artistic expression with a strong sense of fashion, while balancing a sense of volume with lightness. Dongyi combines both fashion design and traditional metal and jewelry techniques in creating her art. She incorporates a variety of media to create her work, such as fabric, metals, wood, used jewelry, found objects, and recycled materials, giving them new meaning during her creation.
Dongyi’s works center on recording and narrating people’s stories, exploring emotions and subconsciousness, as well as personalities and self-expression that they reveal. “Every person feels like a complex book. My pieces, only reveal fragments of these books, showing my observations and thoughts.” Dongyi transforms her perceptions into written forms, such as poems, novels, and diaries, or finds inspiration in existing literature work. These textual ideas are further translated into visual language embodied in her wearable arts. Every element in her pieces can be seen as a character, while the pieces themselves become the stories. Audiences who wear the pieces are invited to engage and interpret the stories from their own perspective.
Influenced by surrealism and street style, Dongyi’s works are often found with exaggerated, absurd, or illogical elements, giving her pieces with quirky, bizarre, and playful quality. At the same time, her preferences for organic forms and repeated linear texture, originating from her childhood art practice of copying traditional Chinese painting, providing her pieces with a lyrical feeling. Fusing of absurd and elegant, rebellious and soft, Dongyi has developed a distinctive art language that has been consistently embodied in her creations.
About Dongyi Wu
Dongyi Wu (she, her) was born and raised in China. She is a contemporary jewelry artist, who is currently working as an artist residency at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in Houston, TX, US. Dongyi has recently completed her artist-in-residence at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, AR, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN, and Contemporary Craft in Pittsburg, PA. Dongyi received her Master's Degree in Metal and Jewelry Design from Rochester Institute of Technology in United States, and her Bachelor's Degree in Jewelry Art Design from Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology in China, and her Dual Degree in Fashion Design and Engineering from the same undergraduate school in China.
Dongyi has her works shown nationally and internationally, such as JOYA 2020 in Barcelona and Schmuck 2018 in Munich, and recently presented her seventh solo exhibition Whispers of the Night at the Focus Gallery of University of Arkansas in Little Rock, in Little Rock, AR. Dongyi was one of the winners of Preziosa Young Design Competition 2020 in Italy, a finalist for the Lydon Emerging Artist Program (LEAP Award) in the United States in 2019, and a finalist for the ENJOIA'T 2017 Contemporary Jewellery Award in Spain in 2017.
Education
Rochester Institute of Technology, MFA of Metals and Jewelry Design
Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, BA of Jewelry Art Design
Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, Dual degree of Fashion Design and Engineering
Selected Awards
2022 Sawed, Soldered, Constructed: The Work of the Houston Metal Arts Guild, Best in Show, Houston, TX, US
2021 Internal Expression Exhibition, Honorable Mention, US
2020 PREZIOSA YOUNG Design Competition 2020, Winner, Florence, Italy
2019 Lydon Emerging Artist Program (LEAP award) 2019/20, Finalist, Pittsburgh, PA, US
2017 ENJOIA’T 2017 Contemporary Jewellery Student Award, Finalist, Barcelona, Spain
2015 Tiffany & Co. Foundation Metals and Jewelry Design Endowed Scholarship 2015, US
Selected Recent Residencies
March 2025- August 2025, Artist Residency, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TX, US
November 2024, Artists-in-Residence, Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock, AR, US
August 2024-December 2024, Extra Help/Windgate Artist in Residence, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Little Rock, AR, US
June 2024-July 2024, National Artists-in-Residence, Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, PA, US
June 2023-May 2024, Artist-in-Residence, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, TN, US
May 2023-June 2023, One-Month Emerging Artist Residency, Baltimore Jewelry Center, Baltimore, MD, US
Solo Exhibitions
2024 Whispers of the Night, Focus Gallery of University of Arkansas in Little Rock, Little Rock, AR, US
2024 Shadows of the Daylight, Glimmer of the Nighttime, Clamp Light Studios & Gallery, San Antonio, TX, US
2021 Passerby, A-Galerii, Tallinn, Estonia
2020 Where is the Abandoned Salmon Strip? Taidekeskus Itä Gallery, Lappeenranta, Finland
2019 Daily Notes, Equinox Gallery, San Antonio, TX, US
2019 Lucid Dreams, Fort Worth Community Arts Center, Fort Worth, TX, US
2018 Wandering in Deep Deep Dreams, Gallery R, Rochester, NY, US