Harmony in Light: Reframing Contemporary Jewellery through Technology, Materiality, and Cultural Coexistence

—The 2025 Beijing International Jewellery Art Exhibition: Rebuilding Connections among Technology, the Body, and Civilisation

Abstract

Contemporary jewellery is increasingly shaped by digital fabrication, material experimentation, ecological responsibility, and accelerated cross-cultural circulation. This review examines how the 2025 Beijing International Jewellery Art Exhibition, themed “Harmony in Light,” reframed jewellery as an interface between technology, the body, craft, and cultural coexistence. Methods: The analysis synthesised the official exhibition brief, a catalogue dataset containing 124 selected work records, the exhibition’s collected papers, and institutional reports documenting the touring presentations in Beijing, Shenzhen, Nanning, and Kunming. The works were interpreted through four linked dimensions: digital methods, craft knowledge, material ethics, and conceptual or embodied expression. Results: The catalogue comprised 60 Concept Domain records, 38 Craft Domain records, 20 Material Domain records, and 6 Digital Domain records. Although explicitly digital works formed the smallest group, digital processes operated across the other domains through parametric modelling, additive manufacturing, virtual presentation, and computational translation of traditional motifs. Material practices expanded value beyond rarity by incorporating titanium, paper, wood, fibres, industrial polymers, and recovered matter. The touring format further connected academic research, public exhibition, design education, museums, and regional craft cultures. Conclusion: The exhibition demonstrates that the future of jewellery lies not in technological novelty alone, but in the coordinated development of technical capability, embodied making, cultural interpretation, and ecological accountability. Its main limitation is that the catalogue dataset represents a curated working corpus rather than the complete exhibition inventory.