Textile artist Yu-Mei Huang first worked with the lab's knitting experts in 2023 on 'Soft Sculptures', a serie of sculptural knits that combine elements of body art and space, breaks down the wasteful and user-friendly system of fixed clothing sizes and shapes. In the lab, Huang developped three different designs : an object, a garment and six wall-hangings.
Textile artist Yu-Mei Huang first worked with the lab’s knitting experts in 2023 on ‘Soft Sculptures’, a series of sculptural knits that combine elements of body art and spatial design. The project explores the interaction between textiles, body and space and breaks down the wasteful and user-unfriendly system of fixed clothing sizes and shapes. In the lab, Huang developped three different designs : an object, a garment and six wall-hangings. All the ^pieces will be shown in the coming year in a performance in her solo exhibition in Taiwan and during the London Design Festival. The object is a gracefully pleated, self-supporting structure. It is knitted with polyester monofilament and elastic, producing a sturdy yet highly flexible and resilient construction.The garment is a one-size-fits all kimono with three-dimensional pleats. With help from the product developers, Huang used an innovative ‘plaiting’ technique to knit the complex colour pattern into the kimono instead of printing it on the fabric afterwards,as she initially intended to do.
She also used innovative techniques in the six knitted wall hangings to create striking floats and pronounced textures, patterns and colours.
Yu-Mei Huang is a London-based textile artist, whose focus lies in innovative knit practice. Drawing from her East Asian heritage, her works reflect a multicultural background that weaves together various mediums, including subjects such as textile materiality, the body and space, cultural mobility, and displacement. Yu-Mei creates a dialogue between visuals and tactile experiences by experimenting with various materials and producing large-scale sculptures and installations that revel in material tactility and the collective experience of space.
