Forum Overview
 

Art and Making: Material Culture, Craft and Emerging Practices took place on 4 March 2026 at the British Museum BP Lecture Theatre and East Foyer in London. Organised by the Asian Academy of Arts, the invited academic forum brought together museum curators, scholars, artists and cultural researchers.
 

Discussions centred on three interconnected themes: material, craft and cross-cultural translation, with particular attention to emerging artists and researchers examining the relationships between materials, symbols, identity and global cultural circulation.
 

A central question introduced at the beginning of the forum shaped the discussions throughout the day: can making itself be understood as a form of knowledge production?
 

Within contemporary art discourse, concepts and theoretical texts often occupy a privileged position, while material and making can be treated as forms of technical execution. The forum proposed a different perspective: when artists respond to the resistance, transformation and feedback of materials, thinking may emerge through the process of making itself. Situating this discussion within a museum—an institution fundamentally structured around objects—also raised questions about how objects carry histories, memory and structures of power.
 

Roundtable I: Emerging Practices Across Generations
 

The first roundtable, “Emerging Practices Across Generations,” was moderated by cultural advisor and West Link Consulting founder Vivian Ni, bringing together speakers from museum, academic and curatorial contexts.

Helen Wang, former Curator of East Asian Money at the British Museum, reflected on historical objects as sites of knowledge production. Drawing on numismatic collections and inscriptions, she considered material artefacts not only as historical records but as evidence of cultural encounters, while also addressing how digitisation has transformed access to museum collections.

British sinologist and historian Frances Wood considered the contemporary value of making and raised a broader question around how value is assigned to things that are made in an age of unprecedented information and visibility.

Curator and academic Iris Yau examined the histories of materials through global trade, negotiation and cultural exchange, drawing attention to the power structures embedded within material circulation.

Dr Xiaoxin Li, Curator of Chinese Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, discussed methodological shifts within contemporary Chinese craft, observing how younger practitioners increasingly focus on material experimentation and global dialogue rather than presenting cultural identity as a fixed category.

Keynote: Jewellery as Cultural Translation
 

The afternoon keynote was delivered by jewellery artist and designer Lu Ying.

Approaching jewellery as a situated artistic practice rather than simply an object of decoration or craft, Lu focused on the intimate relationship between jewellery and the body. Through wearing, materials enter everyday experience and can operate as an evolving cultural language.

Her practice combines titanium, moonstone and historical decorative traditions, using material experimentation to explore relationships between technology, embodied experience and Eastern and Western aesthetic structures. The forum framed this as a form of cultural translation that unfolds through wearing and interpretation rather than relying on a single fixed explanation.

Roundtable II: Cross-Cultural Imagination and Emerging Curatorial Positions

The second roundtable, “Cross-Cultural Imagination and Emerging Curatorial Positions,” was also moderated by Vivian Ni.

Speakers including Viv Lawes, Erika Song and Luyang Zou discussed positionality, cross-cultural dialogue, technology, identity and emerging curatorial perspectives, extending the forum from questions of material and craft towards the changing conditions in which contemporary artistic and curatorial practices operate.

Art and Making used “making” as a shared point of departure to reconsider how practice, material and objects participate in the production of knowledge, and how long-standing hierarchies within the art system shape the interpretation of different forms of practice.

Event Information
 

Forum: Art and Making: Material Culture, Craft and Emerging Practices

Date: 4 March 2026

Venue: British Museum, BP Lecture Theatre & East Foyer, London

Organiser: Asian Academy of Arts
 

Chief Curator: Fang Ting Ting

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Event Coordination: Wen Shaoyue

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Executive Director: Yang Jie

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On-site Coordination: David Shi

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Academic Advisor: Zhao Jun

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Production Team: CJcaptain, Hou Yajie, Roland Min, Shan Linhao

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Guest Assistants: Chen Sangyu, Wen Xuanhe, Min Yueying, Cai Qingjuan, Cheng Qianyang, Qian Lumin

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Poster Design: Liu Jiachen

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Online Coordination: He Ziming, Chang Zeqi

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Video Production: Bruce Huang

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Photography: FeiLing Peng