POLITICAL WAVES. POLITICAL BODIES.

I have selected some interesting jewelry artists and designers who stand out for their acumen and expressive originality, inventing new languages and aesthetics, without giving up the courage to express strong, sometimes uncomfortable content.

Eva Van Kempen

A Dutch goldsmith and jewelry designer based in Amsterdam, Eva's work fits perfectly into the current context of instability caused by the spread of the Coronavirus and the impact it will have on both national and international social and political balances. She finds inspiration in medical achievements, specifically those related to procreation. Her work analyses the impact of human intervention on the species’ control and regulation. The specific topic of interest for Eva is the regulation of abortion laws, which represent one of the key elements for determining the temperature of a democracy and a region's respect for human rights.

As an activist artist - she defines herself  an artivist - Eva gives life to a personal and unique artistic practice. Her use of contraceptive, morning after, and abortion pills in her jewelry creates a semantic short circuit. At first glance it is difficult to focus on the material. The colours and harmonic composition of the elements give the pieces a strong decorative impact, which deflects and deviates from the content.  

Her work aims to celebrate the value of life in the full mastery of the female body, 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.

Snem Yildirim

Snem Yildirim is a Turkish designer interested in cognitive learning processes and the formation of the identity of the individual.  Her work questions how the education system transforms us into individuals who are obedient to authority.

A great protester of authoritarian and sovereign regimes, Snem's voice stands out for her technical and executive capacity, and for her unique aesthetic. Her designs demonstrate a sophisticated use of different codes and linguistic motifs, whether belonging to her culture of origin or borrowed, traditional or contemporary, political or decorative.

She uses a contemporary lexicon belonging to digital culture. Snem often works with the self-portrait, making the identical multiplication of the self an impersonal and disturbing portrait of the community.

Corrina Goutos

Originally from upstate New York, Corrina now resides in Hamburg, Germany and is a winner of the ITS Sustainability Award. Corrina's work deals with consumerism, the effects of mass production on society, including gender clichés, preconceptions, and patterns in which we are inserted. 

Corrina's research is primarily focused on sustainability, pollution, and the problem of the disposal of waste, especially electronic, borne by the planet and our body. Her work fuses natural and artificial materials, building polymorphic and mutant beings, staging the struggle of life in a toxic and unhealthy environment. 

Her latest collection, I Don't Want It In My Body, mixes objects found among the most disparate, mostly electronic waste, with natural elements such as shells. The presence of elements such as metal chains, piercings, plastics, refers to the aesthetic of the metal and punk culture.

Réka Lőrincz

Réka Lőrincz is a Hungarian jewelry designer whose work also deals with issues of sustainability and consumerism. Her goal is to dismember the values linked to consumerism and the stereotypes belonging to contemporary culture. By combining various objects, all imbued with strong symbolic value, Réka re-contextualizes them in irreverent narrative compositions. 

She crafts her designs using pearls, objects of daily use, found, precious and non-precious materials. The seemingly random assembly of ordinary elements unfamiliar to each other generates a fascinating construction.

Réka emphasizes the value of the different perspectives from which to look at the world. Her pieces suggest that with freshness and authenticity, once can relativize the sense of things and the value of the same. 

The jewel, like art, may not offer solutions, and probably will not change the world, but it stimulates new points of view on the issues that concern us, while bearing meaning and promoting diversity.