Plugging into the Petricore Circuit Board

Esther Hong, NYC-based jewelry designer and Petricore creator, talks found objects, cyborg feminism, and the self-delusion of being an artist.

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I meet up with Esther Hong in cyberspace, our conversation about her experimental jewelry brand, Petricore, aptly mediated by screens. Esther is fresh out of the shower when I catch up with her from her parents’ home in Houston, Texas. She is sporting her choppy black hair — cut high across her forehead — narrow, frameless glasses, and an air of unaffected coolness. 

Esther has returned home to the Lone Star State from her Bushwick apartment and nearby art studio after a recent manic episode led to a brief stay in a psych ward. This break from her whirlwind artist’s life in the city has given her the chance to reflect on her creative path, the inspiration behind her designs, and the consequences of building a career online — reflections she shares with perfect candor, wisdom, and reverence for the power of art. 

Petricore was launched in 2019, in what Esther refers to as a lockdown-inspired act of desperation. The experimental artisan jewelry brand quickly shifted toward cyber aesthetics and found objects. Across the Petricore archive, you’ll find circuit boards on necks, watches strung together across waists, and iPod Shuffles clipped to locks of hair. You’ll also find recognizable faces like influencer TinyJewishGirl, IMG Worldwide model Luke Clod, and actress/writer Ariela Barer. In 2024, Esther rebranded as Petricore and joined Studio 103, a collaborative artists’ studio in Brooklyn featuring textile, jewelry, and accessory designs. 

Originally Petrichor, a term for the smell after rain, the nascent branding reveals its early inclinations: flower charms and beads awash in vibrant VSCO-filtered light. An olfactory term might seem misplaced for a jewelry brand, but Petricore is much more than mere accessory: Multisensorial, multifunctional, and now, multifactorial. Petricore’s newest endeavor, dubbed the “Modular Collection,” offers sleek, silver designs that snake around the body and writhe with adjustable drawstring stoppers. The pieces, which can be mixed and matched in interaction with each other, lend a cyborgian effect to the wearer as the silver cords seem almost like wires connecting one’s various circuit boards. 

The new Petricore merges its two components seamlessly, with the organic and the artificial playing out in perfect harmony. Esther describes her newest collection of silver hardware as “inspired by the form of dew drops:” symbols for the digitization of nature. Petricore, in my estimation, plays within the gaps and exposures of the postmodern. It is interested in playing with the identities offered by the digital world; Petricore wearers are Manic Pixie Dream Girls, cyborgs, TikTok dominatrixes, femcels, and artificial influencers like Lil Miquela. Petricore’s designs define adaptability as the transgression of boundaries, and the identity of Petricore wearers is as unstable as the pieces themselves. 

Brandi Martin: Can you describe the evolution of Petricore? 

Esther Hong: It started when I was looking for a job during COVID and no one would hire me. I was just stuck in my room, stuck with my family, just looking for a way to make something work and make something beautiful. It was during the Y2K trend when everyone was making friendship bracelets and kitschy things, and it hit for all of us for some reason. I was looking at this one account called @uglyaccessories that styled Beabadoobee in friendship bracelets. I was like, “Oh, my God, I can fucking do that. Like, why can't I fucking do that? Why can't I be the one styling Beabadoobee?” And so I went to Hobby Lobby, and I found the exact same little beads, and I started making them myself, and just by the generosity of my friends, sold them on my Instagram story. After that, I started experimenting with clay and all these different mediums. 

It was basically a huge ongoing project of “Can I do this? Oh, I can. Can I do all the things I see online? Yes, I can.” I was just proving myself right over and over again, and also ripping artists off over and over again [laughs] but adding my own twist to things. I eventually revealed to myself that I had a creative style that was unique. Now it's a completely different thing, where I'm experimenting with modularity in terms of stainless steel and the most resilient materials. And it's completely unique. I don't see anyone else doing anything like it. So it makes me so proud that the love child that was the internet and my friends, and people believing in me, in other people, in art that is kind of derivative but not, ended up making something that is actually original. 

BM: What have been your big milestones with Petricore? 

EH: Definitely TinyJewishGirl. Ariela Barer posted this photo wearing her piece with Tegan and Sara and I was like “Oh my God. I can die now.” I met Quelle Chris at a concert venue I worked at in college. He’s this rapper I’ve admired for a really long time. I offered to send him a promo piece and we became mutuals. 

Once stylists and influencers saw me as legitimate after my clock era and into my circuit board era, that was huge. That was the defining moment that made me believe Petricore could really be something. People were finding me left and right. The algorithm finally swept me in and I was becoming explore page material. Someone posted my work on a style blog Instagram and it was like “Woah,” because I was that girl, and now that girl is using me as inspiration. 

The biggest milestone I’ve had was making my modular pieces, which helped me enter into a phase of real sophistication with my art. It went from kitsch to architecture. 

Oh, and getting my Shopify domain was really big. That shit is expensive. 

BM: Why jewelry? 

EH: I am just truly, seriously an impatient person. With fabrics, I can't even think about sizing variations and I don't want to. I don't want to have to discriminate for the sake of efficiency. It seems way too complicated — the body and its form as a template. That's too much for me to even think about, let alone making [sic] sure each stitch is perfect. If I were to make clothes, it would be very conceptual, and it might only be for my body because I can't think of every other body. Jewelry makes it so that you can adorn any body, any gender, any spectrum. It's so accessible, and that’s what makes it beautiful.

BM: You’ve sourced vintage watches, lockets, charms, iPods, and circuit boards for your past work. Can you speak about recontextualizing and giving new life to these items?

EH: Recontextualizing is my practice of love, renewal, and rebirth. When I started this jewelry project at home during COVID, I could not really source too much, and I wasn't even really thinking about sustainability or zero-waste to start with. It was as simple as “watches would look so cool on the neck.” I was being vain and being poor at the same time and that led to making things that were truly beautiful in a completely different way. I feel like I want to be such a rebel child, but I am so soft. So my way of rebelling, the biggest way that I could think of in the confines of my budget and who I was as a person, was putting lockets right next to a watch or putting pearls right next to Cuban chains. It just unlocked a whole new power for me to take just about anything and imagine something completely brand-new. 

It’s funny, too — when I first started and I didn’t have much capital I was stealing so much from Hobby Lobby. I was like “I hate being here in Texas, I hate this Protestant-owned company, I hate what they do against gay people. I’m just gonna rebel against it by stealing and then creating something gay.” 

BM: Recently you’ve transitioned to your “modular” pieces. Why is this where you’ve shifted your creative energies? 

EH: The idea just dawned on me when I was in a rush to have something new to show for my studio opening. There was no pre-planning, no vision board, no eureka moment. I was just playing with snake chains and magnetic clasps and drawstring beads I ordered. I ordered them all in bulk because I had this vision of wet, slippery metal, and the more I played with it, the more I was like, this could be wet and slippery all the time; it could be wet and slippery in between people. And then I made modular pieces. I love the concept of them because it allows anyone to play with jewelry as something that is not so dainty but is also very strong, and very mathematical. 

BM: If I may draw upon our interest in Donna Haraway, these pieces feel like a manifestation of cyborg feminism: a dissolution of jewelry taxonomies; in active interplay with the body; a continuation of Petricore’s cyber aesthetics. 

I'm literally screaming. You're talking to me and I'm talking to you. Now that you're telling me Donna Haraway I'm freaking out because — I'm gonna get personal now — I don't know what it is about our friendship that has carried me through so much of my life without you even being present. I'm so impatient I can't read Donna Haraway, but I hold on to the titles and the tidbits that you say, and I'm sure that I use them in my art. 

BM: I’m the theory, you're the practice. 

EH: No, it's so crazy. So what this is reminding me of is that in anything I make the general themes that I want to embody is the delicate balance of soft and hard — and now with the modular collection, balancing use, function, form, fit and style all in one, which I think Japanese people do really well with all of their design. Good design being a piece that fits into your life, in its philosophy as well as its use case, as well as it just simply being so beautiful — which is a fucking woman.

BM: Oh my god yes. 

EH: It's just a pregnant woman. 

BM: So when you’re balancing all these disparate themes and ways of being, how do you conceptualize the life force of your art? Are you the agent, or are the materials?

EH: I'm such a messy person. I mean, I just exploded into mania. When I do Petricore, it's truly a feeling of such deep catharsis for me, because I literally have no idea what I am doing at any point in time — which is why I'm so confused when people say they like it because I feel like it's a scam. I feel like a scam artist sometimes, even though I'm literally making art and I'm pricing it fairly and I deliver. It’s just a ball of confusion for me. 

I do everything backward. I buy so many pieces in bulk, and I spend a lot of money on them, just so that I can be in debt and then have as much time and space as I need to make something beautiful that I know will happen. It's this delusional faith in knowing that the art will come out, because it has come out time and time again, and people have loved it time and time again. And that's why I feel like it’s a scam, I guess, because I do it backward, but I'm scamming myself into believing that I'll be a good artist, and so I turned into a good artist. 

BM: I think you might have landed upon the only way to be an artist. 

EH: Yeah. Now I want to get into painting after I had my big break [laughs] well, breakdown. I just want to be a painter now. I do want to do Petricore but I have it figured out, and it's easy for me to do now. It seems like a cycle of just doing because I locked into something, a medium that feels original and beautiful in all facets of good design — and so I don't have to “think” about Petricore anymore. It has its own self-revolving diametric of play and work. But I miss discovering things, I miss the chase, and now I think that will have to happen with painting or drawing. 

BM: What is it like to experience your career (and life) online and has it informed your work?

EH: It seriously has. I had my psychotic break online which is a really big and funny moment for me because I was like “Oh my God, I cut my hair like Lane from Serial Experiments Lane. Am I God?” Everything felt like a metaphor upon itself, upon itself, which was me. And that is real, if you want to think about it that way. Your phone could be so real, especially because I started Petricore online. Everything I did that helped me become myself was online so I had a really hard time separating myself from my phone. 

I saw myself in everything and it's too easy to do that. But now that I'm out of that moment, I still think it's miraculous, the ability to be with the world on such a grand scale, to create art at such a grand scale, to discover art and exchange goods at such a grand scale. I wouldn't be an artist without my phone, and I wouldn't be an artist without Instagram, but I am an artist at heart and in soul. I think it's going to be a lifelong journey of knowing and trusting that it's in my body and not on my phone. 

BM: Phone is just a tool. 

EH: Phone need not be pregnant woman.

BM: You’re the pregnant woman. The phone is just the sonogram. 

EH: Oh my god yes. 

BM: How and why did you come to work in a studio? 

EH: I found a group of people who all had a greater vision for their work. We were all chasing different things, but together made a truly precious space to create. My life circumstances aren’t compatible to keep up with it, but while it worked it helped me really solidify what Petricore could be. 

The stability of being able to clock into a space and make things is so important for anyone. When I first got it, I remember going there and taking the time to organize all of my little bits, all of my used pieces that I hauled over from Texas. They’re still sitting there in their tiny little boxes since I’ve yet to do much with my old upcycling practice because I had the time and space to create a new idea while keeping all my little found treasures near and organized. That did so much for my headspace; It did so much for my confidence. I wasn't just a college student, splaying out everything I ever owned on the floor and trying to see things from it. I think every artist really deserves to have a consistent space like that. Murakami said something about being consistent, but I don't like him. 

BM: Actually, I think Esther Hong said that. 

EH: Yeah, fuck him. 

BM: What advice do you have for pursuing a creative career? 

EH: Being with friends, connecting with friends. Friends are the best thing for any creative. I feel like the state of play is really hard to access as a creative in this world, and it feels like delusion, because the world is really fast and hard and rough, and to be an artist is a very crazy thing to do technically. 

Every epiphany I've had that has helped me create something real has come from conversation and just being in awe of another person's mind, even though it has nothing to do with me. Like us, when we would just talk about girlhood, literature, fashion, secrets — that led to thinking about beautiful things, which led to searching for something like that in my life…butterfly effect. 

It has such a magnificent impact on creatives because that's their own working mind they don't share with other people. The more you talk, the more you realize truths for yourself, and the more real your art gets, and then one day, it comes out in something beautiful. 

BM: Where is Petricore going next? 

EH: Oh my God, I don't know. I have many ideas. One of them is building a modular system that interconnects seamlessly with each other. So I can see how this bracelet can make two earrings, or how a belt can be broken into two necklaces. Create a diagram or an ever-growing database that allows you to see which piece can connect with which to give wearers unlimited agency to modulate their own wear and use function, every time. Basically arithmetizing my pieces so that I can add a whole new layer to the accessibility feature, where it could be like a game that you play or items to collect to make something big. 

For more information about Petricore, including upcoming drops or custom orders, please visit their Instagram. 🌀

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Brandi Martin is a writer, artist, and self-professed femcel scholar. Her work often covers post-structural feminism, monstrosity in the horror genre, and aesthetics.