Didi NG Wing Yin on his “obsession” with wood
From Hong Kong to Helsinki, the artist-designer talks us through the material curiosity, hands-on chaos and his fixation on his charred, pleated and carved wooden forms
- Words Ayla Angelos
When Didi NG Wing Yin wants to make something, he sits in front of a finished piece for an entire day – just looking at it, letting its meaning arrive on its own terms. It’s a somewhat meditative approach to a creative process, one that feels exceptionally rare in a discipline that is so often driven by deadlines and render decks. It also says a lot about how he works. For the Hong Kong-born, Helsinki-based artist-designer, wood becomes the protagonist of which he shapes into furniture. The material becomes its own entity, a collaborator of sorts, that he then charrs, splits, pleats and carves into forms that could be deemed sculpture just as much as craft and design.Didi studied Industrial
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