Adagio Uno A special edition by Letizia Maggio, Raquel Bessudo and Alice Brazzit

Artist list

Raquel Bessudo, Alice Brazzit, Letizia Maggio

The project was born thanks to Letizia Maggio, Italian jewellery artist, and Alice Brazzit, Italian photographer and video artist based in Barcelona.
Multifaceted and sophisticated Megumi Isono gives a special taste to this refined artistic project starring as a model for the very first time.
Memories and their significance are meant to be the most relevant element to focus on.
On the occasion of Munich Jewellery Week the project is enriched by the contribution of Raquel Bessudo, a Mexican jewellery artist whose work somehow merges in both the sensorial experience and the artistic proposal of Adagio.Uno.
Raquel’s work seems indeed to well respond to the project’s ambition to be an open investigation into the themes of time and memories, traces and signs.
As photography teaches us, an image is the pure settling of rhythm, the sense of time made into image.
A minimalist and conceptual style is reflected in the dual aesthetic soul of the photographs and the jewels: they are both evanescent yet present, stylized and essential.   

Letizia Maggio's technical and artistic research evolves into a sophisticated and complex narration, which mixes materials such as silk, silver and textiles into innovative and abstract compositions. A strong inspiration, which derives from the light and austere aesthetics of the East, transmits a sense of calm, peace and composure that permeates the atmosphere all around.
The overlapping of small geometric layers of fabric, elegantly and expertly mixed, creates imaginative patterns that change flavour and sense according to the distance they're-observed from. A bit like the photographs and the video themselves, playing with the details and the illusion of the moving image, at different speeds, but possibly in an Adagio

Raquel Bessudo works to design and compose creations through the use of different materials and elements, such as printed images, pieces of fabric, metal, iron, all organized into compositions with a flavour both naive and delicate. They are pieces of memory that are sewn and linked together, to enact these memories and bring them back to life. Raquel interprets the memories not as objective elements, but as events that occur, resulting from the dynamic relationship between body and past.

Overall, thanks to the uniqueness of the incredible photographer, Alice Brazzit, the project aims to communicate a suspended grace, beyond time itself, perfectly embodied by the elegant allure of Megumi Isono, which breaks down any commonplace logic of beauty and expresses the absolute singularity of the intensity of life.



This exhibition is a part of Polyphonous 2019.
Professor Jivan Astfalck, Rachel Darbourne and Laura Bradshaw-Heap have created, in partnership with Gabi Green, Polyphonous 2019, a hub of pop-up exhibitions for Munich Jewellery Week.
Studio Gabi Green has been a regular platform for the work of the team since 2012. Previous exhibitions include Suspend.ed, Suspend.ed in Pink, Subterranea and an iteration of JUNK: rubbish to gold. The gallery was the sole venue participating in MJW in the West End of Munich, Polyphonous was established in 2018 to create a hub of activity and encourage visitors.  
Gabi Green spent the summer of 2017 canvassing local businesses in the area to find suitable venues for the team to offer to other jewellery artists. Polyphonous debuted in 2018 as six exhibitions for international jewellery artists and the 2017 cohort from the MA in Jewellery, Silversmithing and Related Products from the School of Jewellery at Birmingham City University.
2018 was a huge success with new local businesses and artists actively seeking to participate in the future. Polyphonous 2019 promises to be even bigger and better with eight venues showing the work of sixteen international artists from the UK, Europe and the US plus a showcase of work from the 2018 cohort of the MA at BCU.
Professor Jivan Astfalck and Rachel Darbourne, both educators, have been generously supported in this activity by their academic institutions the School of Jewellery, Birmingham City University and Plymouth College of Art respectively.