On the occasion of Munich Jewellery Week, Adornment is pleased to present the second chapter of Nuda Vita, an experience of artistic production that presents the work of some of the most interesting contemporary jewellery artists. The exhibition will take place at ABC Westside Galerie from 11 to 15 March 2020.
The initiative, curated by Ilaria Ruggiero, explores the value and role of the public, collective and political body, taking as its starting point the expression Nuda Vita, coined by Benjamin and then developed by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, reworked as an impossible condition, an indescribable concept, and an artistic action.
As an artistic movement and an open platform for reflection, this year the exhibition presents the previously unseen work of 12 artists who have both continued and made further contributions to artistic research around the public body and social and political identity: Vivien Bedwell, Daria Borovkova, Satomi Kawai, Anna Lewis, Nina Lima, Peter Machata, Jana Machatova, Nanna Obel, Margherita Potenza, Eva van Kempen, Tanel Veenre, Snem Yildirim.
The artists were invited to explore different aspects of 'nudity', as an ideological and existential condition that humanity experiences when free from constraints, rules, obligations and norms, in order to develop a personal artistic resistance action.
The goal is to compare the most varied experiences and to broaden social and political awareness. The great wealth of perspectives and themes, already set out in the first edition, presents jewellery as a means of raising questions relating to major issues such as the role of women in society, the issue of gender, the freedom to have control of one's own body, sexual orientation, slavery, the idea of beauty, regimes and dictatorships, mysticism and eroticism, disability and public spaces.
With a view to accompanying the creations with an in-depth critical discourse, in this edition the relationship between ethics and aesthetics will be considered in greater depth, in an attempt to position artistic practice in a progressive stance and give it true weight.
Nuda Vita remains an act of provocation and resistance, subversion and awareness, which stages the body, through the jewel, as a statement of politics, identity and humanity.
Vivien Bedwell, Australia Muted Touch, from the series Body Language
Fingertip rings Photo credit Michelle Bowden 2020
Vivien Bedwell is continuing her investigation of the treatment of people with conditions such as disease, illness or impairment and their functionality in public spaces. The objective of the work is to re-contextualise resources that are vital for people with sensory and cognitive impairments. The wearable objects explore spatial and bodily senses as a conceptual reflection on the ways in which these provisions are not always correctly placed or maintained creating a barrier, which is inequitable.
Daria Borovkova, Russia relative No.2, from the series relatives
Collar Photo credit Federico Cavicchioli
2020
Daria Borovkova continues her investigation on the role of Russian woman in the early twentieth century. In this new body of work she has focused on a very intimate level, by mixing her personal experience together with
historical references.
Her artistic lexicon, layered in semantic and symbolic multilevel, stems from the research work carried out on the Woman.hood series, and develops in the latest works where maturity and descriptive essentiality emerge.
Satomi Kawai, Japan
Her Black Hair, from the series Emotional Body
Ring
2020
With the title Emotional Body, Satomi Kawai dedicates her new adornments to Akiko Yosano, a female poet and pioneer of Japanese feminism who valued the expression of self-esteem with a female body, more than 100 years ago.
She develops a series of jewels that incorporate tactile qualities and organic elements, to stage the sensuality and delicacy of the powerful images enclosed in Akiko Yosano's verses.
In her research she continues to explore the quality of femininity, including physical, mental, emotional and psychological layers.
Anna Lewis, United Kingdom Touch 1 – Touch 2, from the series Touch don’t touch Body pieces Photo credits Laurentina Miksys
Models Jennifer Morgan, Ellen Rehmatulla
2020
Anna Lewis continues her research around the idea of the corset being a tool of both constriction and manipulation, by bringing the work back to the idea of the naked body in close proximity to the object. Through her work, which evolves through the use of different materials and aesthetics, Anna expresses the need to reunite, reverse the rupture of the human and overcome the detachment that is damaging us.
Nina Lima, Brazil From the series Blue Blood
2020
Nina Lima continues her research in the field of racism, forms of oppression and slavery exercised less and less openly by society and man. The aesthetic imagination, connected to the idea of the old cameo, is expressed in a contemporary key through the use of both new and ancient materials. The sense of the work emerges in the symbolic game between red blood and the so-called 'blue' noble blood.
Nina elevates the nature of blood as a symbol of struggle for egalitarianism and human rights, and creates her personal ransom cry for the blood shed by thousands of black men throughout history, subjected to dictatorships, despotism and slavery.
Peter Machata, Slovakia
Stigma Brooch Photo credit Peter Ancic
2020
In Peter Machata's artistic practice various aesthetic imaginaries flow, from the classical and metaphysical to the ecclesiastical and political. His pieces refer, in form and structure, to religious relics, while the content and materials used have a narrative and figurative value, which is politically and ideologically provocative.
In particular, the Stigma series represents a set of palms, with a round cut and pure white colour, metaphysical and perfect, which contains symbols and icons of our time, with different political and religious references.
Jana Machatova, Slovakia Portrait of lady, from the series Frauen-Fleiss
Brooch Photo credit Peter Ancic 2020
The vast panorama of figures that populate Jana Machatova's artistic imagination varies from politicians to ordinary couples, to intimate family contexts.
Children playing, women at work, couples in love, animals, references to the historical context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century of Socialist Czechoslovakia, follow each other framed in small medallions with various and irregular geometric structures. The Frauen-Fleiss series contains a set of works inspired by old postcards and newspapers, focusing on, but not exclusively, portraying women's life and crafts, developing a sentimental work on memory, on the value of small gestures and on the poetry of everyday life.
Nanna Obel, Denmark Middle-age skin, from the series: A Jewel of a Wife ...with just one flaw Brooch Photo credit Dorte Krogh 2020
Nanna Obel focuses her personal artistic research on the role of women in contemporary society and on the public and private perception of their bodies, especially in relation to intimate and delicate experiences such as female hygiene, intelligence, dependence on marriage, promiscuity, assault and aging. Difficult issues to deal with, which often generate feelings of guilt, shame, fear, insecurity, difficulties in self-affirmation in the woman's experience, especially towards men.
Her voice is positioned between the aftermath of the conservatism of the 60s and the openings generated by contemporary activism. The expressive style, always focused on telling a story and on the juxtaposition of multiple levels and narrative environments, is influenced by her background as a graphic designer and is characterized by a very personal use of collage.
Margherita Potenza, Italy Chest tile, from the series Body Cartography P
hoto credit Daniele de Carolis 2019
Margherita Potenza's artistic practice spans from objects to installations and performances. The body, explored in its theoretical and metaphysical meaning, is the object of her investigations. An aesthetic and philosophical path aimed at defining the substance and essence of the human being. Being body and matter, being emotion and feeling, being mind and psyche. The intention of Margherita, who stages a symbolic mapping of the body, is to reunite the disintegration of being operated in contemporary man through a mapping that has the appearance of a ritual.
Eva van Kempen, The Netherlands Title Lady Liberty, from the series Freedom as Luxury Crown Photo credit Hugo Rompa Model Eva van Kempen 2020
Eva van Kempen finds inspiration in medical achievements especially related to the procreation process and analyses the impact of the human intervention on the specie’s control and regulation. She uses expired medication as materials to create elegant yet thought provoking jewels, while honouring medical achievements and life itself. Her work aims to celebrate the value of life in the full mastery of her body by the woman, and therefore the possibility of wishing free and easy access to medicines, which must not be the privilege of a few, but the right of everyone.
Tanel Veenre, Estonia
Brooch From the series Papilla
2020
According with his traditional artistic research, which speaks through great archetypes, in his latest work Tanel Veenre creates a series of nipples (papilla in fact from the Latin means nipple). Ancient symbol of femininity and emblem of fertility, Tanel takes up its simple shapes to create a series of ironic brooches, carved from real gemstones (onyx, rock crystal).
To the symbolic and propitiatory value, which accompanies the breast as a symbol of wealth and fertility, Tanel adds the irony and subtle provocation typical of his art, where the idea of sex toys is always predominant, with the aim of sabotaging the formalism and the patterns of contemporary respectability society.
Snem Yildirim, Turkey Sense and Sensation I
From the series Tabula Rasa 2020
Snem Yildirim has always been interested in cognitive learning processes and the formation of the identity of the individual as a result of external stimuli and patterns. In the previous collection, Daily Obedience Routines, she was questioning how the education system transforms us into individuals who are obedient to authority.
In this new collection, Tabula Rasa, Snem goes one step further and explores the concept of nudity through the definition of Tabula Rasa by Locke, for which was the theory that at birth the (human) mind is a "blank slate" without rules for processing data, and that data is added and rules for processing are formed solely by one's sensory experiences.
Snem Yildirim uses a current and contemporary lexicon, belonging to
digital culture, intervening provocatively with a pop and alienating
imagination.
She often works with the self-portrait, making the identical
multiplication of the self an impersonal and disturbing portrait
of the community.
NUDA VITA II The practice of collective and political body
Munich Jewellery Week
March 11 – 15 2020
Everyday from 12.00 to 18.00
Sunday from 12.00 to 16.00
Opening reception March 12 from 16.00 to 19.00
ABC Westside Galerie
Schwanthalerstraße 176
80339 Munich