Everyday I try to read the blog and I have to confess that I get nervous at times when I try to process all of the information I read, but anyways…
I pay lots of attention to your writings and I think about them a lot. First of all, I have a lot of different ways to work and approach a piece of jewelry that I’m creating, sometimes the pieces are well structured, such as the necklace that we already talked about, one can really perceive my architectural background and the school of thought that influenced me while developing that piece. But other times, it is purely about feelings, stories, dreams that belonged to me or others. I understand how you work at times and I would love to know more, you know? I had seen your work prior to meeting you and when I saw some of your work; it reminded me of the pieces I had seen of you to perfection. I find your work very strong and subtle at the same time, I hope one day my pieces can achieve the subtleness I see in your work.
You have been in so many places around the world!!!!!
I have not been in as many places as you have, but the one thing I can share is that Barcelona has been the place where I have spent the most time and were my feelings have evolved and changed the most. This is the place that has made understand what an outsider feels like, what being an immigrant really means.
This is the list of the places I have been.
I was born and raised in Caracas. Caracas is colors, the tropic, diverse vegetation and exotic fruits!! MY HOME!!! At the end of the day, this is home base.
Mexico short trip during my childhood, I have a few images in my brain as a result of this trip.
New York is a city in constant transformation. One can reinvent that place every time is visited (my sister and my nephew live there)
I have visited other places in the US and Canada. I have been in Boston, Washington, Miami, Montreal, and Chicago. I spent six months in Chicago which I used to enjoy the city’s architecture and urban design.
In Europe I have traveled as a tourist and visited places such as London, Madrid, Bilbao, Granada, Zaragoza, Toledo, and San Sebastian amongst others. I have also been to Paris, Roma, Milano, and Parma. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to work in Parma, which was the city I loved the most while being in Italy, it is such a gorgeous and elegant city. Athens and the Greek islands are very familiar and special to my heart because a very good friend of mine resides there. Istanbul!! I would go back there if I had the time to let the city take me without the constraints of being a tourist. Geneva, Amsterdam, and Toulouse, amongst others that I can’t reacall at the moment.
Ahhh and there will always be a special place in my heart for a small Caribbean island named Aruba which will always bring me peace, that was my family and some of my closest friends vacation place during my teenage years.
I read how your piece came about and it summarizes all the feelings inspired by a place. I like that!
I have an idea, but it is still without any form, and what I want to express is a particular feeling that sometimes I get and is that of “no place at all”. It is complicated it is like feeling that you belong no where but yet all those places make you who you are. I intent to deepen my thoughts on this on future writings.
I have been experimenting with resins and silicone molds. Recently though, I am working with wax for special orders from clients.
Hi Andrea. There are too many old buildings in Idar_Oberstein? I have that feeling.-
I’m always watching the city where I live (now is Valparaiso), I’m very interested in knowing what it’s happening with the old buildings and the new ones. Here is very common to see how the old buildings are disappearing because a fire, earthquakes or just because they have been abandoned for many years. The law it isn’t very strong to protect them, and of course, it’s a best business to build from zero, so many, many buildings are disappearing. It’s quite sad. It’s very different of what I have seen in Europe, that seems to be the opposite.
As architect, is easier to go inside these buildings…at least to be a witness.
I took this picture some days ago. This building withstood one of the majors earthquakes of Valparaiso (1906), it’s a solid one!, and now all the parts have been taking away to be sell as wood, parquet, windows and doors.
I have the impression that the building itself it’s like a big person, and somebody it’s taking off his clothes, layer by layer. It’s a complete nudity.
Paint//Plaster as a Copihue relief (National flower of Chile) //Modern MDF panel //Wood //Adobe
Every day on my bike travelling through Amsterdam, from here to there. Cycling around connects and divides places at the same time. But also me; I am part of the city and I daydream; I am thinking one thought to another; conscious about traffic, unconscious collecting images, colors, ideas and desires.
Yesterday I took some photo’s when cycling. Daily life in fragments, map of flowing thoughts, movements frozen in time.
“So that what we are really doing when we walk through the city is thinking, and thinking in such a way that our thoughts compose a journey, and this journey is no more or less than the steps we have taken, so that, in the end, we might safely say that we have been on a journey, and even if we do not leave our roon, it has been a journey, and we might safely say that we have been somewhere, even if we don’t know where it is”
Hi Miguel I’ve been away for sometime. Busy with other things for the moment… but I’ve kept thinking in the WGA project and I think am getting closer to a concrete idea. Time is flying and I realise I feel the urge to start organising my thoughts direction a plan of work.
I am back into the idea of thoughts. Thoughts like projected images in what shapes deliniate feelings. Sketches of mental “anatomy”.
Traits, LH 2009
Eduardo Graue
La semana pasada, recordé que en una ocasión en otra casa donde vivía, durante algún tiempo comenzó a oler como a gasolina o gas. Dicho olor provenía de un patio exterior que se usaba como bodega. Por querer saber la causa, comencé a mover objetos almacenados y encontré un gato ya muy alineado al piso. La operación siguiente iba a ser difícil y escabrosa. Como de costumbre tratar de contenerlo todo en un recipiente, bolsa de plástico, bote de basura, eliminar cualquier mínima partícula hasta las que provocan el aroma. Me quede impresionado al encontrar dentro de este conjunto otro animal nunca antes visto. Como de 2.5cm de largo, ovalado, muy negro y con manchas naranjas muy llamativas repartidas simétricamente en los caparazones de sus alas. De chico a veces jugaba con unos parecidos, que desde el mes de Junio se aparecían en las flores del parque por donde vivía. Este me impresiono por sus contrastes, y el lugar en donde estaba, le tuve miedo, lo vi durante algún tiempo con repulsión, respeto y luego, todo se fue al bote de basura.
En una segunda ocasión, pasando las hojas de un libro sobre coleópteros, lo volví a ver nuevamente. Este segundo encuentro me hizo entender, que la primera vez había sido muy especial. Este insecto es muy sigiloso y solo vuela de noche , con hábitos muy peculiares, porque al salir busca la materia útil para primero depredar en ella larvas de otros insectos y posteriormente por debajo de esta ,escarbar galerías profundas al fondo de las cuales arrastra la materia encontrada y con su pelo o plumas ( elige mamíferos y aves pequeños) forma un nido profundo y aislado evitando la depredación de sus futuros hijos a los que cuida durante un tiempo y que mas adelante vuelan para reproducirse repitiendo el ciclo. Escarabajo Enterradores “Necrophorus marginatus”
Después de observarlo detenidamente durante algún tiempo, recordé que en ese patio, el piso era de cemento y esto nos habia cambiado , al muy especial y respetable “Necrophorus” y a nosotros por causa de la ciudad, el juego
I remember last week that in some occasion in other house where I live, during some time, start a smell like gasoline or gas. This smell belongs from an exterior courtyard that was used as a storeroom. Wishing to now the cause, I start moving stored objects and found a cat sow very aligned as the floor. The next operation that comes ,was harsh and difficult. As the custom is, tried to contain all in a recipient, plastic bag, can, eliminate every particle even the ones who produce the aroma. I was impressed to find inside this united ,another animal never seen before. Very black, about 2.5cm large, elliptical with very flashy orange spots shared symmetrically on the covering shells of their wings. When i was younger ,I use to play with a similar kind that appears on June in the flowers of the park near where I live. This one shocks me because of their contrasts an the place where he was. I feel scare at him, I stay looking with repulsion, respect, and then all goes into the garbage can.
In a second occasion, turning the pages of a book about coleopteros I meet him again. This second encounter makes me understand that the first time was very special. This insect is very cautious and only flies at night, with very particular habits because when he goes out, search the raw material for first predate on it warms of other insects and then scratch in the ground below, for drag all this stuff ,into deep galleries , on the bottom of which also forms with feathers or hair (he choose small mammals or birds) a deep nest to keep the new sons apart of depredation and protect them until they fly for reproduction an continue the cycle. Bury beetle is his name “Necrophorus marginatus”
After looking at him carefully, I remember that the floor of that courtyard where I saw him first, was of cement and this had change use , the very special and respectful” Necrophorus” and we because of the city , the game
I have been away for a long time. But nothing seems to have changed so much or has it? I always think like that when I come home after a stretch of time away from the daily routines. Sometimes every day life does not seem to fulfill the hope in the future, it may even seem monotonous, an avoidance of thinking in a better world. If you think like that, you may wonder what has happened in world history: were the lives of people same as mine hundreds of years ago? Has there not been any changes evolving from daily life?
Amongst the things that seem to have changed, the myriad of little things that move without us noticing them, I found a couple of events that renewed my expectations in the change that is to come. These two findings refer to the ways in which we look at the others (and by reflection, the way we look at ourselves).
Some weeks ago, while preparing the last exhibition I made, which dealt with the obsession with the death in the work of Mexican master artist José Guadalupe Posada, I found myself trying to understand the times he lived in. A century ago Posada was the eye that saw for the many: the artist who looked around him into the daily lives of his peers and fellow countryman, to the folk on the street.
Posada lived and worked amidst the first revolution of the 20th century, the Mexican Revolution. During his daily life, working from a small print shop in downtown Mexico City, he used to draw eight to 10 plates a day. These plates recorded the lives and dreams of the many but also the private lives of the few. Posada filled the gaps in the imagination. These gaps exist between our life and the endless possibilities of living.
In his lifetime Posada draw more than 20 thousand images with his own hands. Sometimes inventing stories and characters, as the famous lady of the death, La Catrina; a cartoon that represents a radical departure from the European Vanitas paintings (whose theme is the vanity of a monotonous life), which transforms dead from as something static and anti esthetic into a living caricature of dead. In Posada’s hands death became a paramount image of life.
And while he was transforming daily life into a promise of the future, by making us imagine the endless possibilities of death (both, within life and after life), Posada became a chronicler of the world around him. When you realize this, you may think about the powers of the artist, the secret potential that his art is bestowed with. Then you slowly realize that death is not to be feared or avoided, because it is part of life and it fits perfectly in existence. We want to die and be born again in the imagination.
After the opening of the exhibition of Posada’s prints in Rotterdam, I read on the paper that 35 thousand people flooded the British Museum to attend the opening of the Mexican Day of the Dead festivities last November 1st. A date when people all over Mexico celebrate they deceased by visiting the graveyards and staging altars in their homes ( at the center of their daily lives) devoted to them. There is no sadness there but a exhilarant celebration of the coming of the death to their homes.
When I learned so many people visited the British Museum in only one day, I stopped to wonder. What is it that makes dead such a popular subject in postindustrial Britain? Perhaps the exhibition and performance attracted many Britons because our economic system has rendered life into a mimic, fearing pain and death, which are both part of life; or perhaps because our lives have become dull and empty, where the capitalist offer of consumption cannot fulfill our desire to transcend.
November is the most significant time of the year for Mexicans because it is the period when they concentrate, by means of ritual, in that which is hold dear to them, on that which makes them feel a sense of community with their peers and with those who are no longer here but remain present by means of invocations.
By virtue of the legacy of one man, Posada, this tradition has become available to other cultures. And thus it has come to seize the attention of other cultures, where the need for change and transcendence is weakening.
No culture can remain isolated or unchanged by the ravages of time. And when a culture needs that of change is not coming from within it is from abroad that it looks for an answer. Mexicans have become masters of that swaying movement, from within to outside, in search of themselves and in need of understanding the diversity of existence.
The first collector was a dead human, buried within his precious jewels and daily objects. The meaning of his or her life was buried with him/her in order to facilitate his journey into the far beyond. The objects he wore and became attached are tools of memory, the means to find the way back to his people, as the indigenous traditions believed it should be.
When thinking about jewelry, as transitional objects that help us communicate and remember, do we think of dead as the end or just as a new stage?
Hi Carolina, it’s good that you are starting to get closer to what you want to do. I’m working here on stones in thoughts of what I could do with them in the future, what kind of theme(s) would fit etc. And while that is going on my emotional and mental “body” is dealing with the migration theme while my physical body is trying to fit into the time plan! Since I have had thoughts about the emotional-cultural aspect of migrants for new work even before WGA came on my path I am quite positive that that is the direction my work for this show will take me. Especially since that is what I feel most strongly about, less about actual borders. My way of working usually ends up being a playing with materials and shapes and details that remind me of the exact feeling to translate. That is actually what interests me a lot – different layers of possible aspects that in the end are connected or comparable even though they may even be quite different. For example these two pictures taken in the old chain factory her in Idar-Oberstein behind the artist-in-residence apartment:
Seeing the beautiful old radiators made me think of the feeling I have for my old home country Germany – lovely (to remember) but not functional (in my new life) or connected to the time now anymore.
Image taken at the Terre Natale project, Cartier Foundation
Human migration is the movement of people from one place in the world to another for the purpose of taking up permanent or semi-permanent residence, usually across a political boundary. Migrations have occurred throughout human history, but they have never been faster and more massive than in this century. Today, over 170 million people live, temporarily or permanently, outside their country of origin, according to United Nations figures.
While some of us deal with the luxury problem of choosing where to live and have the means to exercise that choice, the vast majority of today’s migrants have been forced to migrate. One of the negative effects of globalization is the exclusion of more and more people from meaningful participation in the market economy, and thus the exclusion to have a dignified life. Migration for most migrants is less about seeking a better life than about having life at all, simply seeking survival.
Art as social commentary is a major theme in modern and contemporary art. Artists often assume the roles of reporter and analyst in an exploration of the nature of society. Always at stake is the artist’s wish to uncover the workings of society and draw conclusions for understanding it more effectively. Art that falls within this theme is often critical of political structures seen as harmful, but it also celebrates the achievements of human communities and can poeticize everyday life. Its ultimate ideals are to preserve what is good and to condemn what is threatening in hope of a better society.
We have invited to this blog some artists whose work deals with migration and its impact in the life of all of us. They hope to share with WGA artists and audience their views on this matter. Through their work, they explore how human migration impacts population patterns and characteristics, social, cultural and personal patterns and processes, economies, and physical environments.
Mexican photographer Luis Aguilar presents a series of pictures that show the journey of Central American and Mexican illegal immigrants to the United States. The U.S.–Mexico border has the highest number of both legal and illegal crossings of any land border in the world. Luis Aguilar joined a group of travelers and accompanied them from the south of Mexico to the United States, bravely and masterfully documenting their journey through the country.
As people move, their cultural traits and ideas diffuse along with them, creating, modifying and enriching cultural landscapes. The artist we have invited to present their work in these pages are able to portrait with a critical and skilful eye, the situations that force people to migrate and the way their lives and deaths change our world. We hope that you will be inspired by their work.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Walt Withman
We wait, hiding under the bushes; resting, talking in whispers. A whistle blowing in the distance becomes closer and closer. We stop talking. No more conversations about the villages we come from, about the food that we already miss. Everything becomes still; the whistle is close. Everybody stands up. The silence is deep and thick. My camera is ready. I can read the fear in the faces of my travel mates: the fear of not being able to climb up the passing train or worse: to die trying. They all think about what they have left behind about what is expecting them on the other side. We all wait for the train.
The locomotive passes in front of us; metal wheels screeching loudly. The travelers disseminate along the train tracks. They are ready. They run along with the train. The women go first, taking the younger ones with them. Some of them stumble and fall down. Some jump and start climbing. In the distance I can see them smile. They made it, they are alive, they are on. The ones left behind can breathe now. They are disappointed, but they are also alive. They go back to their sheltering bushes, to wait for the next train…
In the last years, my work has circled around the topic of migration in an attempt to deal not only with the socio-political aspects that it involves, but also with the deep personal processes experiences by people who are forced to migrate. I would like to present to you some images of to of my latest bodies of work. For the first series, Migracion, Suenos y Esperanzas del Sur (Migration, Dreams and Hope from the South), I accompanied undocumented migrants from Central America and Chiapas (a state in the south east of Mexico), both experiencing and recording their journey to the border of the United Sates . The second series, Lista de Articulos para un Viaje al Olvido (Travel Gadgets for a Trip to Oblivion) is a photographic inventory of the objects left behind in the Mexican desserts by migrants on their chase of the American Dream.
Working on these projects was for me an intense and emotional journey, that placed me in the midst of the dramatic reality of forced migrations. I could witness how this appalling experience brings out the extremes of people: from the strong will to have a better life to the solidarity among the travelers and the people they encounter trough their journey; from the pettiness of the governments that look over the reality of the migrants, to the meanness of the people that traffics with their dreams.
The migrants go through a long and painful journey. Hope grows on the lonely landscapes they cross, fed by the sweat, the hunger, the fear and strength of those men and women. Their peregrination forces us to review reality and become more conscious of injustice and inequity, exploitation and racism. Forced migrants from all over the world can only live day by day, holding on to a future that they don’t even know if it is there. They show us the saddest face of global mobility and take us to reflect upon the world we live in.
Forced migrants from all over the world can only live day by day, holding on to a future that they don’t even know if it is there. They show us the saddest face of global mobility and take us to reflect upon the world we live in.
tomorrow I’m going to meet Karin Seufert who is coming to São Paulo after a trip to the Amazon region and Rio de Janeiro. We decided to organize a workshop in the countryside of São Paulo and WGA has been a sort of stimule for it!
We are going to discuss/research materials, whether its identity is connected to a place or not! Karin along with Tore Svensson are bringing materials from Sweden and Germany and the participants will bring their own.
I will post later pics about this workshop!
If any of you are also interested in coming for a workshop, let me know!
Thanks to you all, the WGA Blog has become a successful project. We are all glad to see that everyday, the WGA artists engage in interesting conversations, while new visitors from all over the world keep joining this blog to learn about the personal process involved in jewellery-making. Following this line of collaborative work between artists from Latin America and Europe, we take advantage of this blog to introduce a new group of six artists, selected by Mexican curator Valeria Vallarta who will work, in the following months to develop a small exhibition to be presented at the Gray Area Symposium’s venue, Ex Teresa Arte Actual.
In Ultrabarroco, visual artists and jewellery-makers Eugenia Martinez (Mexico), Estela Saez Vilanova (Spain), Cristina Filipe (Portugal), Heleno Bernardi (Brazil), Alex Burke (Martinique) and Benjamin Lignel (France) explore and discuss the complex processes and relations between ex-colonies and ex-colonizing countries, both from an historic and current perspective. Each artist will create a jewelllery piece as a result of their dialogue. This exhibition is being developed within the frame of the Ex Convent of Santa Teresa la Antigua, a Carmelite convent built in Mexico City in 1616 and will be inaugurated in April 2010 in Mexico City.
We wish to welcome the Ultrabarroco artists to this blog.
I’m starting to join some elements. Charcoal, hand made paper (the one you saw), and enameling surfaces…..All of them came from our conversations. I have in mind words as “limits _ borders _ contrasts”.
I don’t know if you notice that for me it’s easier to use images to explain my thoughts, so, I will add a picture! The upper part is a piece I did when I was living in Barcelona, it was about “bird houses”, and was linked with the abandon places in that city. The other picture is a construction where I participated in the years as architecture student.
The limit here is the scale. In both works the topic is “to give a place to stay”.
I would like to find a way to connect our works.
I have two sets of materials. Maybe I can send you one, and I work with the other one…..and you can do the same….well, it’s an idea…….I know you are quite busy now…so I will wait for your answer.
Hi Andrea
I’m starting to join some elements. Charcoal, hand made paper (the one you saw), and enameling surfaces…..All of them came from our conversations. I have in mind words as “limits _ borders _ contrasts”.
I don’t know if you notice that for me it’s easier to use images to explain my thoughts, so, I will add a picture! The upper part is a piece I did when I was living in Barcelona, it was about “bird houses”, and was linked with the abandon places in that city. The other picture is a construction where I participated in the years as architecture student.
The limit here is the scale. In both works the topic is “to give a place to stay”.
I would like to find a way to connect our works.
I have two sets of materials. Maybe I can send you one, and I work with the other one…..and you can do the same….well, it’s an idea…….I know you are quite busy now…I will wait for your answer.
“I have been thinking that we could generate a list of places we both know and have visited and continue on that line of thought…”
Dear Samantha
I’m very happy to hear that you understand my situation, my feelings, and my questions and that we have it in common.
Nevertheless I think that you are working and thinking very different than I am. I see that you like diagrams; you’re more concrete than I am. I like the necklace idea. I can see your architectural qualities. However I start new pieces less rational, but need also a structure. Perhaps I can explain my decisions for a certain form less precisely, it’s coming up more like an image to me, more instinctive.
I will try to write down all places I visited. All cities.
Than we can add small comments, seeing if we got a discussion. Perhaps the last place visited has left the biggest impression? Or perhaps a certain experience has left a color or odor.
If I’m honest I already have a piece of jewelry in my mind for this project. It came up after I wrote on the blog about homesickness.
It’s an oleander flower upside-down. It represents my feelings about the sadness of the home left behind, the critic I have about it but on the same time the sweet memory of it and the happy feeling about my new country. It represents myself, covering my real identity to unknown people, protecting my inside, and floating on endless water.
A, Norway (end of the world, big impression, inspiring)
Amsterdam (where I live since 18 years, love, son, work, career, home, inspiration for jewelry)
Antwerp (clothes, love, food)
Barcelona (visited 3 times, warm, swimming pool, ramblas, cava, food, love, shoes etc.)
Bellinzona (climbing, under the stars in the night, inspiration for the rest of my life, stones)
Bern (I have a hate/love feeling about it, because of a love story)
Berlin (Twice, before and after the wall was broken down, love it, feeling free, warmth, kindness, big, freedom)
Bruges Belgium (Jacques Brel)
Brussels (several times, food)
Bulle (in the mountains in Switzerland, lived for one year, a long time ago, youth, car, love, adult, work)
Comares/Andalucia (long, relaxing holiday, Flamenco dance and music, inspiration for collection “Frozen” about white and nature, felt in love with a dog…)
Cologne (Food, Books)
Granada (lost)
Edinburgh, rest of Scotland (inspiration, relaxing, music, love)
Florence (architecture, colors)
Gent (Jacques Brel)
Geneva (visited twice, cold impression)
Cordoba (inspiration mesquita, food, wine)
Istanbul (twice, see, father, first oyster, odor)
Lausanne (lived one year, cold, study, lake)
London (several times, cold, Indian, bad sleep, stress)
Milano (visited several times, love it, food, cold)
Montreux (jazz festival, lake, love)
Munich (several times, grand parents, first beer, old, schmuck, sadness)
Paris (several times, inspiration, love to come again and again, love, culture, gloves, photography)
Roma (cars, tradition, food, did’nt like it)
Rotterdam (could live there)
Selcuk Turkey (worked and lived one month, made a collection, loved it, odor, sound, garden, cats)
Siena (place, food)
St. Petersburg (3 weeks, worked as assistant for my partner a photographer, loved it but was happy to go home, said, new, strange, inspiration, bridges)
Torino (once, love, night, lights, tunnel)
Trondheim Norway (to short)
Tokyo (twice for exhibitions, cried when left, food, work, people, material, would like to go back for longer!)
Venice (visited twice, cold, boring, yes..)
Vienna (long ago, didn’ love it)
Zurich (born, grow up, my dialect, love, adventure, art academy, lake, snow, ski, mountain in summer, odor, climbing, films, books, childhood etc.)
While I’m writing all the cities down I think this is boring…
I stop, what sense does it makes?
There are so many more without significance.
There are only few, which inspired my work directly…In fact its nature and Amsterdam who is inspiring…Phfuahh
Samantha,
I cannot wait seeing your list, finding some in common!
I am going to the Koru 3 conference and exhibition this Thursday staying there till Sunday. Next week I have the opening of Tallinn Applied Art Triennial. I am sorry, but during next two weeks I will be unable to blog here.
But I will keep a little empty spot for the Grey Area ideas behind my brains.
I like the traces, am here in the studio working on paintings mostly at the moment.. will post pics soon. Apart from this, have been thinking a bit about how my environment / locale may reflect in this new collaborative work. I’m currently surrounded by vending machines and kiddie-rides in the studio..
"Cuando las Gallinas Mean", Coin-operated vending machine
In Ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the city’s life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses, white or black or gray or black-and-white according to whether they mark a relationdhip of blood, of trade, authority, agency. When the strings become so numerous that you can no longer pass among them, the inhabitants leave: the houses are dismantled; only the strings and their supports remain.
From a mountainside, camping with their household goods, Ersilia’s refugees look at the labyrinth of taut strings and poles that rise in the plain. That is the city of Ersilia still, and they are nothing.
They rebuild Ersilia elsewhere. They weave a similar pattern of strings which they would like to be more complex and at the same time more regular than the other. Then they abandon it and take themselves and their houses still farther away.
Thus, when traveling in the territory of Ersilia, you come upon the ruins of abandoned cities, without the walls which do not last, without the bones of the dead which the wind rolls away: spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking a form.
Hi Miguel I’ve been making some experiments focused on traces. I am doing as well a couple of photographic studies which I hope will be able to post you soon. Till now I feel like these are a bit random explorations but by reflecting upon them I think I am getting closer to a more concrete idea. How are you doing?
Greetings
Chequita Nahar
Hello Ketli,
How are you ? I was thinking about wat you said. A lot off the enclosed pieces of jewellery with hidden messages or herbs we have are called Tapoe. This means closed and only the wearer knows what is inside and where it is used for.
Most of the time it are simple square forms. hereby one off my old necklaces where I translated the precious tapoes we use in Surinam for natural precious forms.
Hi Carolina, it’s good that you are starting to get closer to what you want to do. I’m working here on stones in thoughts of what I could do with them in the future, what kind of theme(s) would fit etc. And while that is going on my emotional and mental “body” is dealing with the migration theme while my physical body is trying to fit into the time plan! Since I have had thoughts about the emotional-cultural aspect of migrants for new work even before WGA came on my path I am quite positive that that is the direction my work for this show will take me. Especially since that is what I feel most strongly about, less about actual borders. My way of working usually ends up being a playing with materials and shapes and details that remind me of the exact feeling to translate. That is actually what interests me a lot – different layers of possible aspects that in the end are connected or comparable even though they may even be quite different. For example these two pictures taken in the old chain factory her in Idar-Oberstein behind the artist-in-residence apartment:
