Fall 2025 - WINNER

Beyond Magic: Revolutionary Unboxism

“Beyond Magic: Revolutionary Unboxism” is a future-oriented jewelry project that reimagines how jewelry can function as a cultural and conceptual medium. Rooted in my experience as a queer Korean woman navigating conformity, the project transforms personal resistance into a forward-looking exploration of what jewelry can signify in future societies. Jewelry has historically embodied identity, belief, and collective memory. This project inherits that lineage while pushing jewelry beyond traditional ornamentation. The pieces are created through a new technique that combines three processes—3D printing, electroforming, and powder coating into one integrated method. Merging these technologies into a single workflow allows the forms to shift fluidly between digital precision, organic metal growth, and futuristic surface textures, presenting a new aesthetic and technical vocabulary for contemporary jewelry. At the core of the project is a fictional Korean NEWS broadcast engraved into the pieces. This imagined narrative reinterprets a real moment of discrimination, transforming it into a story of resistance and empowerment. By blending fiction with reality, the work positions jewelry as a medium capable of rewriting narratives and imagining more liberated futures. The project expands further through video art, creating an immersive environment where jewelry becomes something activated rather than simply displayed or worn. This hybrid presentation encourages viewers to encounter jewelry as a dynamic system of communication that bridges craft, new technology, and speculative storytelling. In its entirety, “Beyond Magic: Revolutionary Unboxism” proposes a future in which jewelry exists as a conceptual and emotional presence—one that carries narrative, memory, and social possibility. It offers a new perspective on what jewelry can be and the futures it can help us envision.