Yuhao Li is a Chinese jewellery artist currently based in the United States and an MFA candidate in Jewellery + Metalsmithing at Rhode Island School of Design. She holds a BA in Jewellery Design from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.
Her work centres on vulnerability as a condition to be held rather than concealed. Through hand-carved wax, metal, and wearable objects, she constructs intimate forms that investigate protection, emotional repair, and the architecture of inner life. Inspired by natural systems of defence and transformation, she approaches jewellery as a space where fragility and resilience coexist.
Li’s practice reflects an ongoing inquiry into how objects can embody psychological experience, transforming personal emotions into physical structures that offer shelter, containment and the possibility of quiet healing.
Current Obsession: Could you tell us the story behind your graduation project and what drew you to the subject?
Yuhao Li: When I was 18, I moved alone to London to study jewellery design. I still remember London in winter – long, cold, quiet and strangely isolating. Everyone seemed to exist in their own parallel world. By the time I noticed the first signs of spring, months had already disappeared into endless grey skies. At that time, I was deeply afraid of loneliness. Almost all of my work revolved around intimate relationships – sweetness, longing, heartbreak. I was living through the reflection of others, relying on being loved, desired, and accepted to confirm my own sense of worth. As Sartre wrote, ‘Hell is other people.’ Looking back, I felt like a shadow floating inside other people’s eyes.
But after experiencing repeated broken relationships and several major personal struggles, I began confronting feelings of collapse, loneliness, and disorientation. It was only through that emptiness that I slowly started abandoning the old framework through which I understood myself. I began to realise that emptiness is not regression, but the moment before rebirth – the painful process through which true subjectivity begins to emerge.
This project grew out of that transformation. I am no longer interested in seeing myself as a self trapped within others’ expectations, but as a transparent vessel – allowing life to move through me freely. My work became a way of exploring how vulnerability can be held, protected, and transformed, and how jewellery might become a space for that quiet reconstruction of self.
‘I have always been interested in jewellery because of its intimacy. Unlike objects that exist separately from us, jewellery lives with the body.’
CO: Beyond the gallery, where do you see your work taking root and finding its life? Who do you hope to reach with your work?
YL: I have always been interested in jewellery because of its intimacy. Unlike objects that exist separately from us, jewellery lives with the body. It moves with us, stays close to the skin, and quietly accompanies our everyday emotional experiences. Because of this, I have never thought of my work as something that only belongs inside galleries.
I hope my work can exist in more personal spaces, in the everyday lives of people who carry invisible emotional experiences that are difficult to articulate. I am drawn to the possibility that an object can hold psychological meaning beyond its physical form, becoming something closer to a private companion rather than simply an ornament. I think many people move through the world carrying vulnerability while constantly performing strength. I hope my work can reach people who recognise that feeling – people who have experienced loneliness, emotional rupture, or periods of rebuilding themselves.
More than being looked at, I want the work to be lived with. If jewellery can become a small structure of comfort, protection or quiet companionship, then I feel it has already found its life beyond the gallery.
CO: What’s your favourite studio ritual?
YL: I love being alone in the studio late at night. Most of my work begins with hand-carving wax, which is an incredibly slow process, so I often spend hours repeating the same small gestures again and again. There is something deeply comforting about that rhythm and over time, I have realised that I genuinely enjoy the slowness of making.
Because the process is so repetitive, I often enter a state where I stop actively thinking and simply focus on what my hands are doing. Strangely, I feel like some of my clearest thoughts appear exactly in those moments. I have come to understand that for me, making and thinking are never really separate. A lot of emotions that I cannot fully explain in words slowly become clearer while I am working.
When I was younger, I was someone who was deeply afraid of solitude. But over the years, spending long hours alone in the studio has gradually changed my relationship with being alone. It has become a place where I feel calm, grounded, and most connected to myself. I think this quiet ritual of slow making has taught me patience, but more importantly, it has taught me how to be comfortable with my own company.
