True is what has been made

Artist list

Rodrigo Acosta Arias, Tatiana Apraez, Rita Bamidele Hampton, Victoria Baquero, Flora Caligiuri, Jorge Castañón, Lourdes Chicco Ruiz, Dalia Drajnudel, Paula Gallardo, Paula Giménez Marques, Laura Gorbatt, Carolina Hornauer, Enrique Jaramillo, Monqiue Lecouna, Laura Licandro, Carolina Luzardo, Corina Mascotti, Simon Mazuera, Nahuel Federico Núñez, Cecilia Richard, Silvina Romero, Linda Margarita Sanchez, Nicolás Stimolo, Patricia Tewel

After graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 1994, Iris Eichenberg worked as an independent artist, art educator, part-time curator, and co-organizer of art-related events. She began teaching at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 1996, where she was Head of the Jewelry Department 2000-2007. Since 2006 she has been an Artist in Residence and Head of the Metal-smithing Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA. Iris Eichenberg is regularly exhibiting, invited to lecture, act as visiting critic, and holds workshops at various art academies around the world. In her second solo exhibition I Do Not Wish at PLATINA in Stockholm, she will show a body of work made after multiple working trips to South America.
 
Jimena Ríos grew up in Mendoza, Argentina and lives in Buenos Aires. She studied jewelry at the Escola Massana School of Art and Design in Barcelona, Spain and Alchimia Contemporary Jewelry School in Florence, Italy. She furthered her education attending workshops by well-known artists and so she met Iris Eichenberg. In 2013 she founded Taller Eloi in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to teach and organize workshops. She has given lectures about contemporary jewelry history and seminars on narrative jewelry in Argentina and abroad. Now she comes to Stockholm as a curator for the exhibition True Is What Has Been with works from 24 jewelry artists from Argentina, Colombia and Chile.


Iris Eichenberg and Jimena Rios paths have crossed and become entwined through their common interest in ex-votos: objects which convey a desire or longing and are made out of necessity. Ex-votos are tokens made to express gratitude for a favor granted by a supernatural force. In the midst of misfortune, such as an accident or illness, someone that is unable to resolve things through worldly means pleads for divine intervention with the help of a maker/practitioner. Ex-votos are mementoes and artefacts of that mediation between two worlds. They are often placed in churches or chapels by the worshiper either seeking grace or to give thanks.

As a curator of contemporary jewelry, Jimena Rios explains:
Behind a traditional ex-voto, there is a votary pleading to a divinity, a granted favor, and, as a token of gratitude, a silversmith making an object, offered in turn to the saint who worked the miracle. The jewelers who took part in this project were inspired by this process as intermediaries between a divinity and a devotee and to materialize the latter’s gratitude. In this case, the “new ex-votos” are made in a contemporary way and will not be placed in a church, nor were they made to return a favor from a saint, but they share that intention.
Contemporary jewelry can be regarded as a medium to start a dialogue. Just like with ex-votos, the dialogue concerning the pieces in this exhibition starts with someone expressing their gratitude. It is the yearning behind this materiality that makes ex-votos rich objects, both in its contemporary and traditional forms. Symbolic power is the link between these two worlds.

Coming from the Protestant part of Europe, and currently residing in the United States, Iris Eichenberg describes herself as a visitor of that Catholic tradition and comments on this joint exhibition:
As a traveler I shop and I am taking, but I do not want to run with the message and leave the real messenger behind. Thus the exhibition took this form. There is an archetype among objects, those which transmit through their making and use, and it is an essential part of jewelry. Ex-votos possess a unique ability to communicate because they stand-in for universal longing for change and betterment. Gratitude and love are hard to convey, and I have real admiration for these objects which are made out of necessity and charged through making.