Tzu-Ju Chen
Originally from Taiwan, R.O.C., Tzu-Ju Chen received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Jewelry & Metalsmithing from the Rhode Island School of Design. While at RISD, she attended the European Honors Program in Rome, where she solidified her love for architecture in antiquity, independent studio practice, and drawing. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Metalsmithing in 2006 from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She was the recipient of a 2006-2007 Fulbright Fellowship to China to research traditional Chinese jewelry-making techniques, principally focused on the Kingfisher Bird Feather Inlay. She designed jewelry for the fashion industry for fourteen years while maintaining her studio practice with exhibition and publication records before pivoting into academia. She has exhibited nationally and internationally since 2000, most recently at MAD about Jewelry 2022 at the Museum of Art and Design in NYC. In 2021, she received an Honorable Mention for the James Renwick Alliance for Craft Chrysalis Award, and in 2020 was a Semi-Finalist for the MacColl Johnson Fellowship with the Rhode Island Foundation. She is the Curatorial Research Associate for Jewelry at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and lives in Massachusetts where she maintains her studio practice and teaching.
I am a jeweler who makes as a means of reconciliation. My objects evoke a sense of home against the backdrop of the world at large. I gravitate towards ancient techniques like the Kingfisher Bird Feather Inlay and Plaque-A-Jour enamel, allowing me to maintain the flux between tradition, cultural identity, and relevance in our current condition. My work is a palimpsest of layers composed across modality, material, and scale.
One of my earliest childhood memories was watching my grandmother get dressed in the mornings. A refugee escaping from Zhejiang during the Chinese Civil War in 1949, she wore her hair in a simple peasant chignon. Daily, she would oil her hair, comb it into a ponytail, and with a string of black cotton, coil it up. As she built up the chignon, she secured it with hairpins made out of 24-karat gold. They were simple elongated U shapes; some had pearls on them, others plain. Her jewelry was important to our family and could have been sold for currency. With the scent of her hair oil lingering in the room, this was my first experience with jewelry.
After immigrating to the U.S. at the age of 14, displacement shaped the way I viewed my surroundings. I searched my new environment for points of identity and connection and aspired to fit in with the aesthetic of an adopted culture. At the Jeweler’s bench, I found peace. The intimate scale of jewelry and the physical sensation of creating objects with my hands is validation. Metal is the only medium for which I have infinite curiosity and patience. My goal is to make work reflecting the emotional undertones of rituals. Rituals are powerful practices, reflecting values in a culture. Inspired by rituals such as my grandmother arranging her hair, I make jewelry as a means of reconciliation between the invisible internal desires and the external act of adorning oneself. From cultural traditions to social conformity, these practices become part of daily rituals that alter our behaviors, impact our experiences, and shape our lives.