What key moments or experiences led you to become the artist, maker and designer silversmith you are today?

I wish I had a dramatic turning point to share, but honestly, everything happened more or less naturally. Some steps I chose deliberately, others came through circumstance. I initially pursued visual art because I’ve always found it more immediate and effective than words in expressing my thoughts.

Since I consistently draw inspiration from everyday objects and my surroundings, my practice flows with my personal life, reflecting my mental state, leisure activities, practical material choices, and aesthetic preferences. It’s an evolving process, grounded in close observation.

Your work explores the tension between primal instincts and social conditioning. What first drew you to examine this particular aspect of human behaviour, and how does your own cultural background—growing up in Shanghai and now working in London—inform this perspective?

Since 2022, I’ve often dined out alone as a way to soothe my nerves. The solitude helps me reconnect with myself, making decisions solely based on my will, or occasionally chatting with non-related strangers if I feel like it. It is pricey, but still more affordable than seeing a therapist.

These solo meals let me observe everything that happens in a dining space. In Chinese culture, solo fine dining is rare, and at home, food has a wider range of varieties that are accessible via cooking or delivery. That contrast sparked my interest in Western dining as both performance and ritual.

In both London and Shanghai, I noticed people suppress their appetites out of politeness. Table manners aren’t official rules—they’re absorbed. That contradiction of following norms no one teaches is what intrigues me most.

At the moment, you are pursuing a conceptual line that revolves around deconstructing and reconstructing human culture through the domestic setting, in particular, the dining space. Do you see a particular tension in exploring suppressed instincts within the domestic atmosphere, normally associated with comfort?

Yes, I see a deliberate and meaningful tension there, which is exactly what drew me to the dining space as a subject. On the surface, the domestic table symbolises comfort, care, and civility—a space for gathering, sharing, and nourishing. But beneath that surface lies a quiet performance of social codes. There are unspoken rules—how to sit, when to speak, how fast to eat. These behaviours aren’t taught formally; we absorb them by watching others and correcting ourselves over time.

In this sense, table manners act like a kind of veil, concealing urgency, hunger, or emotion under a calm exterior. Appetite becomes something to regulate. At the same time, these restraints offer security. We take comfort in predictability. A controlled dining environment allows us to relax within agreed boundaries. It creates a shared space that feels socially safe.

What I find most compelling is that this balance between comfort and control is so familiar that we often stop noticing it. By making small disruptions to the dining scene, I try to draw attention back to these layers of behaviour, to the instincts we’ve been taught to suppress and the systems we unconsciously uphold in everyday life. That’s where the real tension lies.

The Restaurant, reimagines dining rituals through hand-crafted sculptural cutlery and upcycled ceramics donated by a Michelin-starred restaurant. How important is the authenticity of these objects to the work's impact? What does the collision between high-end dining culture and your subversive cutlery reveal about contemporary food culture?

During development, several people suggested I make the ceramic parts from scratch to save time—stone carving is physically draining and painfully slow. But I deliberately chose to work with the retired crockery from Lyle’s (where all this crockery originated) because it reflects a very specific kind of waste—one driven by image. These dishes weren’t broken. They were just no longer pristine enough to meet Michelin standards. That kind of quiet disposal fascinated me. In addition, the fact that the restaurant chose to retain them in the storage room instead of throwing them away triggers my impulse to bring them back to the table again.

Incorporating those pieces allowed me to anchor the work in a real dining context, not just a symbolic one. These were once tools of refinement—now repurposed to stage a disruption. By embedding zoomorphic gestures into the sleek geometry of David Mellor’s cutlery (which the restaurant uses), I aimed to create a slightly uncanny scene. The table looks familiar, but something’s off. The utensils twitch with appetite. The calm is broken, but only just.

To me, this mirrors a wider shift in how we approach food. Dining has become a kind of spectacle. It is curated, documented, and consumed visually before it’s even eaten. We’re no longer just satisfying hunger; we’re performing civility. The work taps into that contradiction, using subtle disturbance to remind viewers of the instincts still lurking under the linen.

In your series, another predominant conceptual and visual narrative employs the movement of cutlery approaching food, symbolizing our innate appetite and taking on predatory, almost animalistic qualities. Can you walk us through your creative process of transforming these familiar domestic objects into metaphors for our "untamed" nature? How do you decide which animal behaviors to reference?

Another major reason I insisted on using authentic crockery from the Michelin-starred restaurant, Lyle’s, is because my inspiration starts with their seasonal menu. Every piece in The Restaurant is based on a real dish served there.

To ground the work in raw instinct, I focus on the predatory nature of animals, where the act of eating and hunting is linked more directly to survival. Thus, the dishes I’ve chosen are mainly non-vegetarian. I research the types of animals that prey on those ingredients. For example, squid for whelks, lions for beef, and snakes for baby ducks, etc.

Even though dramatic gestures are memorable, I find viewers respond better when they recognise what’s happening. So I’ve made sure that the narrative flows logically—from ingredient, to cooked dish, to the final sculptural form.

The dining table has been a subject for artists throughout history, from Dutch still lifes to contemporary installation art. How do you position "The Restaurant" within this broader art historical context? What makes your approach distinctly contemporary?

It is actually the first time anyone suggested Dutch still lifes as a reference. Their use of abundance and decay to hint at morality somewhat serves as a major part in my most recent designs for a silversmith collection, using dead culinary birds as its highlight. It calls back to the influence my personal life has on my artistic practice. Because I’ve spent the last year learning heritage craft and improving my techniques in the isolated countryside, where pheasants occasionally land in our garden. Whereas The Restaurant was created when I was surrounded by academic friends studying conceptual pieces, eating out in fine places in London.

I see The Restaurant as a continuation of the tradition of using food and dining to discuss human behaviour. It sits somewhere between a theatrical set, a quiet protest, and a joke that gets funnier the longer you stare at it. While classical works often captured dining as a symbol of status or morality, I’m more interested in the unspoken habits we perform around it—the ones we forget are learned.

My approach tends towards contemporary because it’s interdisciplinary and self-reflective. I work with ready-made objects, but I heavily intervene, blurring function, sculpture, and performance. It’s not just about food or beauty, but about how we behave around it, how design reflects control, and how instinct slips through formality. It’s also shaped by my own lived experience, moving across cultures and observing rituals up close.

Looking at pieces like "Hereford Zebra & Lionish Forks" or "Devilled Crab & Clawy Forks," there's a playful humor alongside the deeper commentary. How do you balance the serious anthropological observations with this sense of wit and whimsy?

Humour is often the easiest way in. The themes I work with—appetite, restraint, social expectation—can come across as quite loaded or even moralistic. So I use playful gestures to open the door. If someone laughs or tilts their head in confusion, that’s a good start. It means they’ve paused, and in that moment of hesitation, the questions can land.

The anthropomorphic forms are exaggerated on purpose. They’re not subtle. Forks reach, curl, or stretch in ways that feel a bit too alive. There’s something slightly absurd about it, but I think that’s where the tension sits best. It mirrors the everyday absurdity of social rules we never formally agreed to but follow anyway.

Humour helps soften the critique. It gives the viewer a bit of breathing room—just enough to get close before they realise the cutlery is mimicking predator behaviour, or the scene is hinting at something more primal. I’m not trying to offer a definitive statement; I’m just setting the stage for a thought to linger. The humour disarms first, then reveals the deeper structure beneath the tablecloth.

Your pieces have been exhibited internationally, from London to Munich to Chicago. How do different cultural audiences respond to your work? Do the social rules around dining that you're critiquing translate universally?

Audiences from different cultural backgrounds bring varied perspectives to my work. In London, the exhibitions I’ve participated in—often with other emerging artists—tended to be more conceptual. Viewers approached the pieces as serious installation art, offering feedback that referenced philosophy and contemporary art movements. It was also easier to connect with local food communities, especially since Lyle’s is well known among food lovers.

Because Western dining cultures are fairly consistent, most audiences quickly grasp the core ideas in The Restaurant. What differs is how people respond depending on the context of the showcase. At Munich Jewellery Week, for instance, the audience was especially interested in the making process and material choices—they’re very attuned to technical innovation. The Chicago exhibition had the unique advantage of being located among restaurants with a relaxed atmosphere, which allowed the work to reach people outside the traditional art audience. Unfortunately, I wasn’t there in person to hear their thoughts, but I like to imagine it sparked some interesting conversation over dinner.

From my interactions so far, I’ve seen that the social norms referenced in The Restaurant resonate universally. That said, viewers most familiar with Western fine dining will likely connect more immediately with the almost site-specific scene I’ve created.

Art and artists play various roles in the fabric of contemporary society. How do you see artistic practices advancing sustainability and social consciousness?

Artistic practices naturally carry thoughts, stories, and memories—making them powerful tools for raising awareness around sustainability and social consciousness. Many contemporary artists, myself included, choose to work with ready-made or discarded materials not only for their physical qualities but for the histories they hold. Unlike commercial recycling, which focuses on function, artistic reuse keeps the narrative intact. The objects are not just repurposed—they're recontextualised.

This approach allows artists to challenge ideas of waste, value, and permanence. In my own work, for example, I use retired crockery from a Michelin-starred restaurant—not just because it's beautiful, but because it tells a story about overproduction, perfectionism, and quiet forms of waste in the hospitality industry. Giving these materials a second life in a new setting opens a conversation about what we throw away, and why.

Art also reaches audiences who might not otherwise engage with these topics. Through exhibitions, media coverage, or even casual conversations sparked by a piece, there's a chance to shift perspectives. When people encounter reuse in a gallery space, they’re reminded that discarded materials still have meaning—and that sustainability isn't just about policy or industry, but also about how we see and value the everyday.

What message or call to action would you like to share with our readers?

Sustainability and social consciousness don’t always need to be the central theme, but I believe it’s important for artists today to be aware of the potential we have to embed meaning into existing materials. Objects come with their own history—memories, uses, even flaws—and by working with them, we can shift how people see and value the everyday. My call to action isn’t about grand gestures, but about awareness. If we treat discarded things with care and attention, we can turn waste into conversation and give overlooked stories a chance to be heard again. 

Learn more about the artist here.

Cover image:

Quail & Headless Fork. Silver-plated brass, stone-carved ceramic, 29x19x11cm. By Rachel Ruiyi Wang.

All images by Rachel Ruiyi Wang.