Date of Award
Summer 5-22-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Jewelry and Metalsmithing
First Advisor
Lauren Fensterstock
Second Advisor
Seth Papac
Third Advisor
Leora Maltz-Leca
Abstract
Jewelry is a poetic translator, through which my intense and complex engagement with history is materialized. By reinterpreting the classical Chinese poem Bring the Wine(Li Bai,752) through paper-based materials, I translate poetry infused with personal traces and a distinct stance into wearable objects that embody the weight of history.
Through jewelry, an art form carried in close proximity to the body, I engage with history by staging acts of document visualization, transforming poems and archival fragments into visual and tactile records. I suggest that in conditions of informational overload, individuals may gravitate toward reductive positions in order to avoid being caught in sustained anxiety, with nihilism functioning as one such response to history. This oversized jewelry series combines two-dimensional calligraphy and three-dimensional papier-mâché to acknowledge the weight and constraints that history impose upon the wearer, allowing the individual to accept the grand and irreversible materiality of history. Jewelry becomes the medium through which historical documentation is materialized.
My intention is neither to critique grand narratives, which often prioritize monumentality and abstraction over individual lived experience, nor to endorse the spread of nihilism. Instead, I argue that individuals are inherently constituted by social relations, it is impossible to sever oneself from history, culture, and society.
Recommended Citation
Zhong, Fusheng, "Within the Archive: Jewelry and the Poetics of Historical Trace" (2026). Masters Theses. 1588.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1588
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Asian History Commons, Book and Paper Commons, Cultural History Commons, Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons, Metal and Jewelry Arts Commons, Other Philosophy Commons