Miss Amelia by Manuel Vilhena

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Manuel Vilhena

Miss Amelia is a story about a girl in strange and curious lands. The story develops through a period of seven days and is basically a voyage. During this voyage, Amelia meets many people and has conversations with them. (Within these conversations lie my working philosophical principles). This story gave rise to jewels that represent characters in the plot and, subsequently, the jewels themselves created deviations and new pathways for the story to unfold. As such, jewels and story created each other.
There are several main characters in this story, besides Amelia herself.
The Bird, which is not specifically, yet intuitively an eagle is recurrent as a background idea only to fully come alive in the end of the story.
The flightpath of this bird (the real one from where the inspiration for the character takesform) served as a basis for the graphic aspect of the Jewels (brooches).

Manuel Vilhena, in Miss Amelia, 2012

The jewels are made of iron and antique coral beads, that come from a necklace given to the artist by his grandmother and kept lovingly for more than thirty years.
Deep down, all is connected. Naturally.
An intimate and nostalgic work that invites the viewer to enter a metaphorical land that, in the end, could become a bit of his own world.
The story is, of course, absolutely true!

Manuel Vilhena, 2014