Rings , 2010s
Jewelry

These rings are made by Jeanette Lee, a Vancouver-based artist who came of age in the 1970s. They are made from Chinese turquoise from the copper vein, displaying a distinctive colour from the silver-coloured American turquoise. In the mid-1980s, Chinese turquoise started to come to the North American market, and it soon became popular. Due to the scarcity of American turquoise, the Chinese ones filled the American demand, and the collectors valued them. As a third-generation Chinese Canadian, Jeanette wore Western clothing in her daily life and adopted a Western lifestyle. Compared to earlier generations of Chinese Canadian women, like her grandmother Wang Shee, Jeanette does not explicitly use Chinese clothes to highlight her ethnic and cultural identities. However, she takes jewelry as a new platform for self-exploration and ethnic expressions.

Exhibited by:

Violet Wolfe

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