Yexi Zhou is a jewellery designer from China.
She graduated from the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology in 2019 before beginning her studies at the RCA.
In 2020, Yexi established her independent accessories brand INVADE in Beijing.
Yexi specialises in applying digital technology and 3D software, and her current practice is strongly inspired by programming and coding.
Yexi’s practice starts from her exploration of solid modelling using 3D software as a production tool in supporting jewellery creation. She is interested in exploring the value of this digital technology beyond its functional role, as well as the new possibilities of its relationship with humans. From learning about and applying Processing, a visual programming language, Yexi writes codes with a diamond as the basic form, generating geometric patterns with similarities according to the theory of fractals. Learning from the way computers generate figures, such as rotating, overlaying, changing parameters, etc., Yexi transforms 2D images into 3D jewellery and names the works from their parameters. This collection of works focuses on building a relationship between programming language and a narrative relating to jewellery, with the aim of exploring the interaction between them. Programming brings fertile visual possibilities to jewellery and, in the meantime, the language of jewellery transforms Processing language, which is always used as a purely technological tool, both emotionally and spiritually.
In the Information Age, programming is a result of human intellectual endeavour: Yexi tries to return it emotionally to the creators themselves, hoping to enable it to retain some temperature, warmth and human touch in its emerging development and its replacement of tools for human production and creative language. The symbolic and emotional meaning of jewellery as an intimate object, meanwhile, enables it to naturally and appropriately become the medium.
