Checking in with Cong Ma

Checking in with Cong Ma

Additional than 100 international artists utilized for this year’s Younger Artist Award. Cong Ma was selected as 1 of the finalists. She acquired an unrestricted money award of US$1,000 and exhibited her get the job done in Platina’s booth at Schmuck, in July 2022.

Cong Ma, Fine Art 101 Group
Cong Ma, Good Art 101 Group, 2021, brooch, sterling silver, fine silver, acrylic paint, 30 x 30 x 40 mm, picture: Shawn Zhang

AJF’s Younger Artist Award acknowledges promise, innovation, and individuality, advancing the professions of mounting artists. The competitors was open to makers of wearable artwork age 35 and underneath who are not currently enrolled in a qualified training system. Judging was dependent on originality, depth of thought, and good quality of craftsmanship. This year’s jurors have been 2020 AJF Artist Award winner MJ Tyson (US) collector and gallerist Karen Rotenberg (US) and educator and curator Chequita Nahar (The Netherlands).

Ma’s do the job represents a team of superb items of up to date jewelry. We asked her to convey to us a little bit about her track record and thoughts on the future of the discipline.

Bonnie Levine:  Congratulations on staying one of the five finalists for the 2022 Younger Artist Award. What an accomplishment! Make sure you introduce your self to our visitors. How did you become fascinated in jewellery? What conjures up your operate?    

Cong Ma: I am a painter, a jewellery maker, and a designer. Born to a relatives of artists, I have been drawing at any time given that I could choose up a pen. I located my interest in art jewellery mainly because it is a special art sort independent of any operation still shut to the individuals putting on it.

Cong Ma, Fine Art 101 Ring
Cong Ma, High-quality Art 101 Ring, 2021, sterling silver, brass, great silver, acrylic paint, 95 x 22 x 1 mm, photograph: Shawn Zhang

What does becoming a finalist indicate for you? Do you assume it will affect you heading forward?

Cong Ma: Currently being a finalist helps make me want to stick with art jewellery. I see the creativity among the all the finalists, and I am grateful to be connected to this neighborhood, specially immediately after a put up-COVID period of growing engineering and quarantine. By becoming in this community, my recognition will maintain up with the situations, and that’s essential to an artist’s advancement.

Cong Ma, Fine Art 101 Necklace
Cong Ma, Wonderful Art 101 Necklace, 2021, sterling silver, brass, great silver, acrylic paint, 300 x 34 x 58 mm, image: Shawn Zhang

Convey to us about the work you utilized with. 

Cong Ma: I see jewellery as a implies to an end for discovering about all kinds of understanding that interest me. My interest in geometry and better proportions inspired this entire body of perform. For case in point, a 3-dimensional ball going by way of a two-dimensional factor would look to be a circle expanding and then finding lesser right up until it disappears. Similarly, a 90-diploma angle intersecting a slanted floor unfolded onto a two-dimensional plane is no more time 90 degrees. These are intriguing observations and phenomena. I would like to convey these illusions through my work in an abstract way.

Cong Ma, Fine Art 101 Cross Cone
Cong Ma, Great Art 101 Cross Cone, 2021, brooch, sterling silver, brass, good silver, acrylic paint, 67 x 36 x 65 mm, image: Shawn Zhang

What excites you about the artwork jewelry field? 

Cong Ma: I get pleasure from making art jewellery because of the freedom it offers me to discuss about any matter in the globe that interests me in significant means.

Any frustrations that you see or have skilled? 

Cong Ma: The romance in between my artwork and me is quite pure. Each time I have an plan, I can recognize about 90% of that concept, and I am normally happy. If there at any time ended up any frustrations, it could be that I would like to understand additional procedures in jewellery-generating to be in a position to express far more of my thoughts. But that would have to have some time and motivation to learning in the foreseeable future.

Cong Ma, Fine Art 101 Cubicle
Cong Ma, High-quality Artwork 101 Cubicle, 2021, brooch, sterling silver, brass, wonderful silver, acrylic paint, 67 x 36 x 65 mm, image: Shawn Zhang

In which do you feel art jewelry is going? Do you see any new and fascinating traits?

Cong Ma: I envision the artwork jewelry area heading in a number of means. To start with, since the audience is comparatively tiny when compared to other artwork fields, it could have the prospective to increase pretty huge, to the extent that its definition becomes ambiguous. It could most likely merge with fashion, furniture, or technological know-how in the kind of games and NFT, which 1 can by no means put on. So people today may possibly not want a actual physical piece to have on and phone jewelry, but they could have an urge to affiliate, fantasize, and eventually convey.

Cong Ma, Fine Art 101 (detail)
Cong Ma, Wonderful Art 101 (detail), 2021, brooch, sterling silver, good silver, acrylic paint, 30 x 30 x 40 mm, photograph: Shawn Zhang

Where by would you like to be 5 years from now?

Cong Ma: I want to continue to believe about artwork jewelry philosophically. As a result of my own experiences and exposures, I can acquire a experienced principle in style. I see it in the type of a treatise wherever I would systematically analyze my feelings and have my artworks replicate those ideas.

Congratulations all over again! Thank you for getting the time to respond to these queries.

This is the very last of our interviews with the honorees. Go through the job interview with Young Artist Award winner Mallory Weston here. Our interview with finalist Taisha Carrington is in this article. Check out out Marion Delarue’s interview here. You’ll come across our interview with Aaron Decker in this article.

Cong Ma, Fine Art 101 Cross Cone Triangle
Cong Ma, High-quality Artwork 101 Cross Cone Triangle, 2021, brooch, sterling silver, brass, fine silver, acrylic paint, 67 x 36 x 65 mm, photograph: Shawn Zhang

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