Healing In Layers
Jean Yichun Kuo
Kombucha Cellulose
2025
Jean is a designer from Taiwan, currently based in Brooklyn, New York. She is a Master of Industrial Design candidate at Pratt Institute. In her practice, Jean explores the relationship between form and function in everyday objects, combining sensory experimentation with material innovation. Her work aims to bring a sense of quiet pleasantness that integrates innovation subtly and naturally into daily life.
Instagram: @Jean.nnn
Email: Jeankuo0709@gmail.com
Jean Yichun Kuo
Kombucha Cellulose
2025
Jean is a designer from Taiwan, currently based in Brooklyn, New York. She is a Master of Industrial Design candidate at Pratt Institute. In her practice, Jean explores the relationship between form and function in everyday objects, combining sensory experimentation with material innovation. Her work aims to bring a sense of quiet pleasantness that integrates innovation subtly and naturally into daily life.
Instagram: @Jean.nnn
Email: Jeankuo0709@gmail.com
The project lies within the spectrum of Material Culture and Connection. It symbolically explores the emotional journey of human healing. Kombucha cellulose is chosen as an organic extension of this idea. A representative of living cells. Its growth requires time, patience, and care, much like the process of human growth, both physically and mentally. In this way, kombucha cellulose becomes both a medium and a metaphor for personal transformation.
In a culture that worships smooth and spotless bodies, marks on the skin are often seen negatively. This project instead values the natural presence of wrinkles, scars, and stretch marks, recognizing them as traces of lived experience. Our past shapes who we are today.
In a culture that worships smooth and spotless bodies, marks on the skin are often seen negatively. This project instead values the natural presence of wrinkles, scars, and stretch marks, recognizing them as traces of lived experience. Our past shapes who we are today.
The objects are presented in a diary format, composed of mixed layers of dried kombucha cellulose, images of bodies, and the marks left by the material itself. Each piece tells its own story: the truth beneath a smooth surface, the care through which a scar is formed, and the ups and downs of a healing journey...etc. The diary becomes a medium for recording the unique story of each wound. Which documents how an injury occurred, what care was applied, and how resilience gradually formed. This project is an act of appreciating the past and what makes each individual unique.
