Walking the Gray Area, an exhibition that was on show for six weeks at Galeria Emilia Cohen in Mexico City, has come to an end. The road that lead the memorable WGA collection was a strange but equally rewarding one for the 40 artists involved and a sort of key that opened the door of contemporary jewellery for a large group of viewers foreign to this engaging discipline.
The culmination of the Walking the Gray Area exhibition, does not mean the end of the walk for the artists and the growing audience who have made of this blog a tool to discuss and learn about the endless possibilities of contemporary jewellery and the richness that cultural diversity brings to its landscape.
The Gray Area Symposium that framed the exhibition and the exhibition itself served to confirm that jewelery is an interesting and fertile media and that there are countless artists all over the world producing extraordinary work, able to amaze the most diverse audience; but it has also served to confirm that its reach still extremely small and that a one week academic gathering is not enough to change the constricted character of the international scene of contemporary jewellery.
The Walking the Gray Area Blog has attracted a record audience of over 15 thousand visitors from over 100 countries in only eight months. An audience that is as diverse as the artists that have protagonized the blog for the last six months. Otro Diseno, in collaboration with organizations and individuals from around the world, has taken upon the task to continue this blog as a platform to promote understanding and appreciation of the diverse ways to view, experience, and create jewellery in a global context and beyond its current circle of devotees.
This new stage of Walking the Gray Area will be inaugurated by Brazilian artist Mirla Fernandes, founder of the project Nova Joia. Mirla will post a periodical review of the contemporary jewellery scene in Brazil to present and discuss the work of artists, designers and jewellery makers born and/or living in her country.
We hope that this stage will encourage other WGA artists to keep in touch among themselves and to share with the audience those projects, images, events and ideas that touch and inspire them.
