yuhao li

Jewelry as a Portable Sanctuary

There are moments when the body becomes the site where experience accumulates beyond what can be readily processed. Grief settles into the chest, anxiety persists beneath the skin, and relational ruptures leave traces that cannot be resolved through cognition alone. In such conditions, the question is no longer how to interpret experience, but how to remain intact within it. How does the self sustain continuity when confronted with what exceeds its capacity to contain? This inquiry begins from a refusal to treat avoidance as protection. The focus is not on how to distance oneself from vulnerability, but on how to remain in relation to it without fragmentation. Protection, in this sense, is not withdrawal, but the formation of a structure capable of holding.

My research is grounded in the understanding that the body does not simply receive experience, but contains it. From this perspective, emotional repair becomes a spatial condition. It involves constructing an interior capable of holding vulnerability without collapse, and of being returned to when external conditions become unstable. Such an interior does not eliminate pain. It allows the self to remain in relation to it without disintegration. Within this framework, jewelry is approached as a material extension of this interior. Positioned between body and world, it operates as a structure of containment. It becomes a portable interior that supports stability, continuity, and return. In this sense, vulnerability can be held rather than concealed. The work examines how such interiors are formed, and how they take material form through objects that exist at the threshold between exposure and protection. 

Interior, Held
Copper, Tiger’s Eye, Silver

Interior, Under Tension
Copper, Cat's Eye, Silver

Interior, Stabilized
Copper, Silver