Yuka Taniai is a Japanese artist known for her style that applies metalworking techniques while incorporating contemporary materials. She is currently based in Tokyo.
She was born and raised in Miyazaki, a region surrounded by the sea and mountains, where an upbringing close to nature deeply influenced her work. Her father’s love of art also played a role; she often accompanied him to museums and browsed exhibition catalogues at home. Among these experiences, encountering sculpture became a turning point, sparking her interest in creating three-dimensional forms.

Her journey into jewellery began when she enrolled in an art university and studied metal crafts, where she was first introduced to contemporary jewellery. The idea of overturning fixed notions of material value led her to begin creating jewellery using alternative, non-metal materials.
Later, while completing her Master’s degree in the same department, jewellery has become an art piece to her that holds potential to be completed when it is worn.
And as she continues to explore the meaning of “the act of dressing up,” she interprets this act as “wearing light.” Through this perspective, she persistently seeks new possibilities for what jewellery can be.

Yuka Taniai sees the act of dressing up as wearing light, and explores the expression of light using unique contemporary materials such as acrylic and nylon that utilize transparency and reflection.
While natural or artificial light provides her with a great deal of inspiration for her work, in recent years she has placed particular focus on phenomena such as sunlight, wind, and flowing water. She applied metalworking techniques to create a three-dimensional structure using her own unique technique of drilling holes and repeatedly threading nylon thread through them.

As the work progresses, the layering of nylon thread represents the “concrete form of time ,” and the process of creation is also part of the work, presenting the wearer with the essence of time.
In addition, focusing on the fact that the human eye and brain recognize light wavelengths as colors, dyeing was incorporated to express the changing phenomena of nature and their traces over time. By creating works that have no form, and which pass away in an instant, she explores jewellery as fragments that transcend time and space.