Hao Chen
About
Hao Chen (Umi) is a researcher with a background in fine art. Her work explores how traditional craft practices are reinterpreted in contemporary material culture, particularly about craftsmanship, nostalgia, and intangible cultural heritage. Drawing from visual analysis, interviews, and firsthand making experiences, she investigates how objects like DIY lantern kits reshape public understandings of ‘tradition’ and ‘ICH’ in today’s consumer landscape. She is particularly interested in how everyday forms of making, whether playful, simplified, or commercially packaged, mediate cultural memory and identity.
Her dissertation focuses on the use of modern materials such as acrylic and hot glue in DIY lantern kits, examining how these substitutions affect perceptions of craft, authenticity, and heritage. Through interviews with users and makers, she explores the blurred boundary between ‘handmade’ and ‘manufactured’, and how participants engage with traditional aesthetics through acts of making. She also reflects on how contemporary design histories might better include non-expert forms of creativity, and how material choices reveal changing relationships between past and present.
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