Walking the Gray Area

Thank you, I am pleased that you liked the butterfly. It is a very simple piece, sometimes I doubted it also for its simplicity and lightness (just as a butterfly). But I like the fact that by wearing it, the shape is changing and the hanging wings remind of a withered flower. With the body of work of the maggots I started later on, but of course it is not a coincidence. The maggots made of mother of pearl (a classical jewellery material) irritate and are disgusting and attractive at the same time. In a former work I worked with rabbit teeth – there it was inverse: the shape was nice, but a lot of people were rejected because they were teeth.

So, that’s for the moment!

Bye, bye. Natalie

Hey!

It’s just now that I discovered your post from January 12th in the gray mass of the blog. Since I am not daily checking it and you haven’t posted it in our account. Sorry!

So, there is more to say! As you probably saw, I posted extremely grey pictures of Zurich, I tried to shoot others, but no deers showed up. The coldness which is probably indeed not only weatherwise, but also socially implied, especially in wintertime. During the summer people are outside, at the lake etc. The sun is melting the coldness. It’s a different city. Now in winter you have to go to dubious, dim bars, you first let alcohol to warm your soul and loose your tongue for finally finding soulmates in such a cave. Melancholy.

Melancholy, loneliness are doubled-etched feelings. If melancholy and unfulfilled yearning would not exist, beauty and desire would be just half as powerful.

One says the russian soul is melancolic, maybe also the finnish (Nelli, what would you think?). Swiss? I would say hidden, because they work so much, there is no space for celebrating melancholy, you live it at home, alone with yourself. The Chilean soul? In Argentina there is Tango, a dance that celebrates  melancholy (I like this dance very much and also do it myself). A dance that fits completely well to the topic of migration and identity.

In the context of melancholy I find it interesting that depression is becoming the number one illness in western society. At that point melancholy has lost its beautyful edge and despair is predominant. I wonder whether this accumulation is also because of feeling homeless. By migrating in any kind of way (geographically, mentally) you leave a home. Or as Stuart Hall says: “Migration is a one way trip. There is no home to go back to.” The noble goal is to find a home in this open space of travelling. Hard job!

But I drift apart! Anyway now I have to go for lunch, but I will be back!

Attached a picture of the mountain called “myth” in Switzerland, hey it’s sunny!

Tot ziens – Natalie

Dear Nano

Finally three images of my city: 1. Close to where I live, 2. on my way, 3. view from my atelier.

Mestizaje -  I Like this word. A good title. Where or what are the mapuche aspects in your scetches (I am not so familiar with mapuche jewellery)? Did they take over the catholic religion? As you can say that catholicism is the pioneer of globalisation…

what is your mix and Claudia’s mix? You are Chilean, homogen or heterogen?

The black madonna: Here is a link to a black madonna which lives quite close to Zurich, in Einsiedeln:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Schwarze_Madonna.jpg . I am not at all religiuos, not baptised which is on one hand sad because I don’t know many Christian stories, but I also really don’t have a link to the religiuos feeling. I thought a black madonna is unusual, but apparently there are many.

Money: Do you take coins because of the picture in it? Is it religious? Then money is holy.

Difficult to say something precise, but since you are in a postcolonial country the question of a national identity is certainly not so easy to define. But you’re trained of doing so. Switzerland is a country where people immigrate. This of course also changes the identity of a country, but we are not trained that much yet to accapt that we have to think about our identity with this new society. There is a sound bite: wir riefen Arbeitskräfte, und es kamen Menschen.” (We called workers and it was human beeings that came.).

I also started with my piece: I am carving maggots, lots of maggots from a shell to finally knot them to pearlchain, or maggotchain. Maggots as a symbol of metamorphosis, at a state which is not yet defined, awkward.

The shell comes from the ocean, probably somewhere in Asia, I bought it in Geneva, Switzerland, Now I am changing its shape in Zurich. It will finally show off in Mexico City and hopefully other destinations. Think local, act global, or the other way around.

Title: The necklace will be titled: “Made in Switzerland” (Made in German is maggot in English is larva in Spanish).

I am thinking about assigning each maggot to a different country. For each country I serach for the average monthly income. I calculate the time to fabricate one maggot and then I calculate for each country the worth of my work. To get the prize of the necklace I add all the sums. So in the end my piece has a global price. Well, I am not sure yet.