Cissy Chan’s Ring

This ring was made by Chan Wing Sze, Cissy. She is a Hong Kong jewelry artist who graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University in 2014Some of her work was distributed through the studio jewelry brand little finger

This ring belongs to a jewelry set called “Far Sea”, which also includes a brooch, and creates a direct link between our daily usage of plastic and ocean pollution. Like the tiny plastic pearls that fill the “stomach” of the fish in Cissy Chan’s ring, microplastics in the oceans are known to enter living fish swimming in the waters of Hong Kong.

In 2018, the non-governmental organization Green Earth started to systematically collect plastic garbage at Hong Kong harbors and beaches.See: Rethink Plastic The activists were intrigued by some of the objects they found and researched the background stories behind these “lost gems”. Cissy Chan’s ring treats a “lost gem” like an actual gem by framing a plastic fish like a jewel. It stages two items typical of the maritime material culture of Hong Kong, a sample of marine plastic garbage and a locally grafted pearl.For another story on pearls, see: Bowl of Pearls By placing the sauce container next to a shiny pearl, Cissy Chan’s work shows how trash can be treasured.