Layered dialogues: paper cuts reimagining Beisita garden - Cultural innovation award (arts and crafts)- Excellence Award: 18th IAI Global Design Award 2025 (Spring Competition)

Layered Dialogues: Paper Cuts Reimagining Beisita Garden
A modern paper-cut series fusing Suzhou’s garden heritage with upcycled urban waste, exploring
cyclical beauty.
This project transforms the ancient art of Chinese paper cutting into a contemporary exploration
of pattern, place, and sustainability. Drawing from the architectural rhythms of Suzhou’s Beisita
Temple garden, the designs distill bamboo and water motifs into geometric abstractions—
interplaying yin and yang, solid and void. Each cut is a deliberate act of layering: traditional
craftsmanship meets modern analysis, and heritage techniques converse with experimental
forms.
The work extends beyond the frame by adorning discarded coffee and snack bags collected from
the garden’s vicinity. These ephemeral carriers, once vessels of fleeting pauses in a tranquil
space, become canvases for rebirth. The paper’s return to nature mirrors the garden’s cyclical
harmony, while the superimposed cuts—interacting with the bags’ existing prints—create
dynamic, site-specific compositions.
By fusing cultural reverence with ecological mindfulness, the series redefines arts and crafts as a
medium of storytelling and reinvention. It is both a tribute to Suzhou’s legacy and a provocation:
how might heritage techniques evolve to reflect today’s intersections of art, environment, and
ritual?