Human, do you want co-exist? The third Lisbon Contemporary Jewellery Biennial is happening soon

At a time of artificial intelligence and the resources it requires, and of exhilarating extraction and loss of species, the question “Human, do you want to co-exist?” (The slogan of the Biennial) makes sense. The general attitude and the way things are suggest that the answer is no. Yet, the question might be an invitation to think further, and this is what the artists showing their work at the Biennial have aimed to do.

One of the exhibitions that explores this question is Coexistences - Jewellery and World’s beauty, which will take place at MUDE, the Museum of Design. Its opening coincides with the official opening of the Biennial on 24 September.

Coexistences asks: “How might we co-exist more justly, empathetically and interconnectedly?” The exhibition is curated by Marta Costa Reis and Patricia Domingues. Domingues writes on her Instagram that: Coexistences …asks how we might interact with the Other—whether other cultures, other species or ecosystems—and what the world is beyond the human. Jewellery becomes a critical stage on which to explore how we project a future of coexistence and interconnection with the many worlds parallel to our own—mineral, microbial, fungal, vegetal, animal, digital, spiritual—and what, after all, (artificial) intelligence really is.

The biennial is reaching out to the wider public with many events and hot locations. The main program takes place in MUDE, the Museum of Design, admired by outsiders and insiders of the contemporary jewellery scene. The biennial has its very own playlist, a musical soundtrack and the members of PIN, Portuguese Jewellery Association of Contemporary Jewellery, have created some activities for anyone to take part in at São Bento market, which is also the biennial's info point. Visitors can photo shoot the most interesting object in their bag, take part in a surrealist drawing game with a focus on jewellery or even have a tattoo made by a jewellery artist. The program of the Biennial consists of main exhibitions, parallel exhibitions, masterclasses, workshops, talks, guided tours and a colloquium with lectures.

Museum of Design, MUDE will also show Tereza Seabra’s Contemporary Jewellery Collection and host lectures of The Colloquium by artists, professors and thinkers on topics of otherness, intelligence and material agency. The Colloquium will run on 25-26th of September and consists of three sessions.

The first one, with Irma Foldenyi, Dr Ngarino Ellis and Dr Joani Groenewald, will focus on materiality and its position in different cultures, its agency, liveliness, care and intercorporeality through jewellery and material discourse. The second session, Otherness, with Dr Francisca Carvalho, Prof.Dr. Harald Bentz Høgseth, Saskia Kolff-van Es will draw from posthumanism, media theory, anthropology and artistic research. This session explores encounters with forms of alterity that resist familiar human categories of thought and communication. The third session, TechnoPoetry, with Dr Anneleen Swillen, Edu Tarín and Conversation Piece (Beatrice Brovia & Nicolas Cheng), will approach technology as a poetic and material condition capable of producing new sensibilities, languages and forms of attention. This session reflects on how technopoetic approaches might reveal hidden relations between matter, cognition, extraction, care, and imagination within increasingly technological worlds. Monica Gaspar will be the final rapporteur, and the moderators will be Patricia Domingues (also curating the colloquium with Marta Costa Reis), Sofia Bjorkman and Agnieszka Knap.

On the main program, there will also be the usual schools’ exhibition and gathering at Arco, the center of art and visual communication. Seven schools will take part, which students were invited to work freely under the Biennial's theme. The theme for members of PIN, the Portuguese Contemporary Jewellery Association, exhibition What Makes Us Blind is gold. It questions the use and extraction of precious materials (often involving the destruction of many pieces), the recycling practices that have marked the history of jewellery, and the very notion of preciousness in contemporary jewellery. It will take place in the Convent of Cardaes, one of the most remarkable Portuguese baroque examples in Lisbon. It is a museum and also an inhabited space and a private social solidarity institution. A community of Dominican Sisters lives permanently in the Convent, caring for 32 women with special needs, aged 18 and over, with the support of professional staff, care assistants and volunteers. The “Jewellery Room” that brings together contemporary jewellery galleries will also take place in the convent.

The Biennial gives local artists opportunities to show their work and actively take part. The biennial’s team has invited participants of What Makes Us Blind exhibition to volunteer on the set-up and give guided tours at the exhibition at the convent. The visitors of the biennial have an opportunity to take part in a kind of orientation game that helps them navigate the labyrinth of a myriad of exhibitions and engage with them. The Parallels program was open to artists all over the world, and the biennial's team – namely Carlos Silva, who coordinated the parallel shows - helped those from far away to find venues.

The Biennial features around 20 parallel exhibitions by Portuguese and international artists. The openings are spread out over four days and happen according to a neighbourhood. This way there is time and clarity to see the shows and explore Lisbon in a guided way. Biennial will take visitors to the palaces, museums, back rooms of churches and places that would otherwise remain concealed.

Coexistences — the theme for the third Lisbon Jewellery Biennial is timely, as were the themes of last editions Cold Sweat in the time of pandemic, and Madrugada/ Daybreak in the 50th year of Portuguese democracy.

The program is available on the Lisbon Contemporary Jewellery Biennial homepage https://www.jewellerybiennial.pt and also on Instagram with daily updates @lisbon_jewellery_biennial. The event is organised by PIN, the Portuguese Contemporary Jewellery Association.

 

About the author

Kaia Ansip (1984) is an Estonian jewellery artist who sometimes writes.
She studied jewellery at the Estonian Academy of Arts and graduated in 2022. Since then, she has kept working in her little studio in the heart of Portugal and taken part in various shows. The rural Portugal governs her inspirations, works and access to materials.
In 2024, she won a Bergesio Award for an essay, Relation to the Body. Since then, she occasionally writes for Art Jewelry Forum, for Portuguese online art magazine Umbigo and now for Klimt02. Her first education was in philosophy. 

Contact: kaia.ansip@gmail.com