UNJEWELRY (Berne 2014)

For mor information: Chiquita Room

Box with four 24 carat gold pieces.
Numbered series of 3 pieces.  

Teresa Estapé explores the symbolic and communicative potential of jewelry to create her own poetics. Her unjewelry is the translation of a constant note in her work; a discourse that reveals how consumerism and capitalist logic infiltrate everyday life and distort the perception of reality.

The pieces of Unjewelry are the result of a deliberate process of subtraction. They are pure in their nakedness, without anecdote or embellishment, emptied of matter, almost intangible; reduced to their minimal expression so they can express the symbolic, emotional essence of jewelry. This is an element usually silenced in contemporary jewelry understood as solely ornamental or as a safe haven confined by the rules of neo-capitalism.

These pieces can be defined as jewelry due to their esthetic and material (24K gold) dimensions; they are made following the knowledge of craft—tradition, technique, touch, emotion. At the same time, they break the parameters of functionality, durability and visibility with the intention of producing strangeness; an instant of bewilderment to reflect on the dichotomy of price and value.

Charo Mora. Journalist.