This Is Not a Jewel

Artist list

Estudio, Nicolás Hernández, Honorato and Vicencio, Patricia Iglesias, Lorena Jarpa, Ana Nadjar, Rocco Napoli, Mónica Pérez, Brenda Reggo, Mariela Vicencio

One of the reasons for this characteristic is that contemporary Chilean jewellery does not have a house of its own, hybrid is one of its main characteristics, but in some way it has been transforming and growing, which has been displacing its way of understanding it, evolving from the concept of jewellery linked to the goldsmith trade, luxury object, high-level artisan trade, to lead to creators who see this "object for the body" as a "portable art", an expression that involves many of the reflections and paradigms that define the visual arts and that make it on many occasions closer to this area of action than to that of design and crafts.
The name of the show alludes precisely to that borderline place in which many creators begin to see this way of dealing with jewellery production as a different place from that of its origin, a “no jewel”. The paradigms of traditional jewellery do not apply with the subjectivities and poetics that put these more critical, risky creators in tension and who are not afraid of a certain misunderstanding of a public that still approaches and sees with the criteria of craftsmanship and design. If a jewel does not have gold and precious stones, is it costume jewellery? Are these jewels? When is a jewel design and when is it art? These are the questions that arise from the work of the Chilean Contemporary Jewellery Scene and where this assembly is a sample of some of its representatives from 3 axes: The precursors and trajectory, Those closest to the trade and Those who work more with the limits of language.

Three views on Contemporary Jewellery.
The curatorship of this exhibition was divided into three axes, which will help the viewer to understand three ways of seeing contemporary jewellery and to be able to make a better map of this diverse discipline. This map is divided into: the precursors who are the jewellers of trajectory and who have transcended the trade in their work. Those who explore the limits of the language of jewellery and who do not even feel part of the concept of contemporary jewellery. Those linked to the trade, to contemporary craftsmanship, a concept coined by some theorists and that defines artisans who break the limits of craftsmanship and who explore concepts, ideas, materialities that highlight them.