Design Academy Eindhoven will present a new annual publication. ‘The Academy Collection’ is a published research thesis designed to unlock and celebrate excellent research for a broader audience.
For the first volume of this new series we selected Jing He (Contextual Design, MA) who has researched in a fresh way her Chinese identity. Jing explores the intentions behind the ongoing challenge her peers pose concerning her “Chineseness” and its impact on her designs.
“I believe that one’s identity reflects where and how one was raised,” Jing says on the topic of copying in China. “I have researched the historical, political, economic and cultural reasons behind the phenomenon and found that the identity of Chinese design is rooted in a long history of copying and transformation, or cultural exchange between China and the rest of the world. In this process culture is borrowed and transformed along the way. There is no ‘pure’ or ‘specific’ Chinese identity in design. Rather, the identity of Chinese design developed through this process of copying and being copied. In other words designs are hybrids between different cultures.”
“The Academy Collection” Vol. 1 is available at Design Academy Eindhoven during Dutch Design Week.