About the artist

Hazel Yan (b. 1993, China) is a craft-informed artist who primarily works with leather and skins as her materials. She holds an MA/MS in Innovation Design Engineering from the Royal College of Art, UK, and has been trained in traditional Florentine cuoietto leather molding techniques as well as leather bark tanning methods. Through her works, Hazel explores ways to amplify the intrinsic complex connotations associated with skins through a contemporary approach to sculpture and object-making. Her artistic practice and research center on themes such as powerlessness and indifference, identity struggles, and modern cruelty. 

Inspired by the "cuoietto" techniques passed down through generations of Florentine craftsmen, I treat leather with water, heat, and wax to achieve structural strength and a buttery shine.

Creating each piece requires a delicate balance of time, humidity, and heat control. Combined with the subtle structural difference in leather fibers, each process has a level of unpredictability where nature takes over.