Exploring the Soft Resilience Within

Exploring the Soft Resilience Within is an ongoing materiality research and textiles experimentation project led by Taiwanese textile artist Amy Hsu Tzu Chen since 2022. The project combines traditional hand-making techniques—such as weaving, looping, coiling, crochet, and braiding—linked to female artisans with unconventional, flexible materials sourced from daily life across Taiwan and England, including galvanized wire, metallic twist ties, and chenille stems.

Motivated by a natural fascination with the balance of softness and strength—seen by Chen as the core of feminine resilience—this open-ended, intuitive practice reimagines familiar craft methods to craft sculptural forms showcasing pliability, tension, and rich tactile complexity. The tactile and adaptable qualities of these works challenge typical expectations of “female” craft, instead functioning as material expressions of a resilient, captivating feminine force that physically interacts with viewers, while also highlighting the vulnerability inherent in women's relationship to touch.

Through a spontaneous, process-oriented approach that avoids strict technical limits, the exploration fosters dialogue between material and method, tradition and innovation, structure and spontaneity—revealing new and unexpected potentials within the language of often undervalued “women’s work.”

This series was chosen for display in the group exhibition No One Has Taught Me This, curated by Blackdot Gallery as part of the London Design Festival 2025. During the exhibition, Chen encouraged audiences to interact with the pieces freely through touch. Many participants expressed surprise and joy at the rare tactile experience in a gallery setting, reminiscing about playful childhood with toys through sensory interactions with the work and feeling empowered by the liberty to reshape the exhibited forms.