Ying chang
Tokyo-based designer working with objects, materials, and structure.
She develops constructed objects that explore tension, structure, and instability through material and form.
After Craft
(ongoing body of work)
After Craft positions material practice between preservation and transformation.
The work is developed through a combination of traditional materials and contemporary fabrication processes, constructing provisional forms that are disrupted, reworked, and reassembled through manual intervention. Elements operate as both structure and residue, retaining traces of their transformation.
Positioned between construction and erosion, the objects remain intentionally unresolved. Material behaviour such as tension, fragmentation, and surface change is allowed to remain visible, extending the process of making beyond completion.
After Craft considers how material knowledge can be carried forward through transformation, adapting to new conditions without becoming fixed.
Suspended Motion
Suspended Motion holds movement in a state of temporary equilibrium, poised between stillness and release.
Each work is balanced through its centre of mass and remains stable until subtle shifts in air flow introduce movement. These disturbances, often caused by the presence of the viewer, activate the work and set it into gentle motion, where balance is continuously adjusted but never fully fixed.
Drawing from the principles and lightness of traditional paper structures, the works are constructed to respond to minimal forces, emphasising sensitivity, instability, and the relationship between object and environment.
The installation is arranged to passively interact with viewers, allowing movement to arise through proximity and atmosphere rather than direct engagement, creating a shared spatial condition between body, air, and object.
Furrows of the Skin
Furrows of the Skin examines the relationship between the human body and material form, focusing on how surfaces register contact, pressure, and change over time.
The work engages with the qualities of skin as a permeable and responsive surface, where impressions and irregularities disrupt ideals of smoothness and perfection. Surface is treated as an active condition, shaped through interaction rather than fixed appearance.
A series of sculptural objects is developed through direct hand contact. Pressing, pinching, and pulling define both cavity and volume, allowing form to emerge through repeated gestures. Fingerprints and marks remain embedded within the material, gradually revealed as the surface shifts and peels.
Through this process, the work positions form as the result of contact and transformation, where the boundary between body and object becomes unstable and continuously redefined.
Malleable State
Malleable State examines the relationship between material temporality and value within everyday consumption.
The work develops a series of objects using perishable and ephemeral materials, shifting them into a constructed context where their presence and potential are reconsidered. Through layering and bonding, the material becomes pliable, allowing it to be shaped and held in a transitional state between softness and rigidity.
The resulting objects retain traces of this transformation, where form appears suspended between fluidity and fixation, and where material qualities remain visible rather than resolved.
Neolastic
Neolastic investigates how material value and perception can be altered through construction and transformation.
The work reconfigures a familiar, low-value material into a constructed object where surface, structure, and tension become visible. Through controlled manipulation, the material shifts from a passive, functional role into an active spatial condition, where compression, reflection, and repetition define its form.
The project examines how minimal intervention can reposition a material’s status, allowing its optical and tactile qualities to emerge in new ways, and questioning how material hierarchies are formed through use, context, and expectation.
Neolastic was awarded the ADAGP Design Award at the Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Étienne.
The Journey
The Journey examines how objects continue to transform beyond the point of making, extending authorship into processes of movement and transit.
The work is developed through a controlled fabrication process, after which the final surface condition is shaped during transportation. Friction, pressure, and impact become active forces, gradually altering the material as it moves through space.
Rather than preserving a fixed finish, the objects register traces of their journey, where marks and surface shifts emerge through contact and time.
Displaced Artefacts
Displaced Artefacts examines how value and authenticity are redefined through material transformation and context.
The work reconfigures mass-produced ceramic vessels through casting processes that partially obscure and reposition their original form. Familiar objects are removed from their functional context and embedded within new material conditions, where surface, structure, and weight are altered.
Traces of the original object remain visible, creating a tension between recognition and ambiguity. The objects occupy a space between artefact and object, where meaning is neither fixed nor stable.
Through this displacement, the work considers how transformation can shift perception, status, and cultural value.
Clay Memory
Clay Memory draws from the tradition of Gongshi, or scholar’s rocks, where natural formations are valued for their irregularity, presence, and resonance with the forces of nature.
The work develops a series of constructed objects that evoke qualities found in natural landscapes, where erosion, pressure, and time shape form beyond direct control. Surfaces and contours emerge through processes that allow variation, distortion, and accumulation to remain visible, echoing the way natural elements are formed through gradual transformation.
Rather than resolving into fixed compositions, the forms retain a sense of instability, appearing as if shaped by external forces rather than fully determined. In this way, the work brings natural processes into a constructed context, allowing material and environment to coexist within the object.
Commissioned for an experimental restaurant in Amsterdam, the work functions as a new form for presenting food, introducing a quiet presence shaped by natural forms and atmospheres.