VONMO 2024 Seeding: A Time Capsule of Contemporary Jewelry


《A Reply to Bai Juyi's Poem at Our First Meeting in Yangzhou》
-------By Liu Yuxi (Tang Dynasty)

Cold and desolate, the lands of Ba's mountains and Chu's rivers,
For twenty-three years, I was cast aside.
In vain, I chant old dirges for friends long gone,
Returning home, I feel like the woodsman with a rotted axe-handle.

By the sunken ship, a thousand sails pass;
Before the ailing tree, ten thousand woods bloom in spring.
Today, hearing your song of solace,
I raise this cup of wine to renew my spirit.
 

If you don't like winter, but winter will come; don't want to separate, but separation will always come; don't want pain, but pain is always with us... But the good thing is that spring will drive away the winter; separation is only for a while; and pain will not always be painful...Material things will be lost, even I myself, who lives in my body temporarily, will lose my body sooner or later...There is no bigger subject than life and death that we need to learn. Over the past three months, I have been exhausted by life. And I have finally understood the topic of ‘how to face life and death’, which I hadn't figured out for our project, Purifying The Soul in 2022. In order to save the life I love most, I almost lost myself in the last two months. I also understand what they say, ‘Without suffering, do not believe in Buddhas’. Even though I know that loved lives could be separated, I want to be together with them for longer period of time... Looking back, I realize that nothing can stop the separation, even art that I've believed in. What can I do with my profession? It doesn't seem to change anything, but I think as an artist, I should throw myself into such a choppy life. All artists have to make social art. Art is in life, and artists are in life.

The artists participating in the VONMO2024 Seeding project are all looking for the essence of everything and creating art with their true love. Reviewing the Seeding ceremony on 24th October 2024, we packed nearly 40 large boxes of artists' works and materials from our studio in Beijing and sent them to the place of East to Jie Shi to watch the sea.

Facing the endless sea and the rocky mountains that are difficult to climb, we gave our artists' works to them, and they were forced to become a jewelry graveyard. Death, life, time, nature, art, the future, and so on, make us think and imagine. The art medium is such that the text can never accurately translate pieces of art. So, the artworks are the words of the artist, and burying them is the same as burying a ‘memoir’ or ‘time capsule’ of contemporary jewelry. “By imagining the possibilities of the future, we can preserve the present.” then our ‘time capsule’ is a contemporary jewelry history container, recording the existing establishment and content of contemporary jewelry and preserving them until the future comes. Both the present and the future are full of uncertainty. But the historical destiny of jewelry will eventually be observed by the world. Thus, a new way of thinking will form.

During the Seeding ceremony, I'm thinking in my mind, ‘You have to go to the top once in your life, and you have to enter the earth once in your life’. Finally, on 1 November 2024, we finished all the jobs of the ceremony. Traveling eastward to Jieshi Mountain, seeding jewelry in the ground. This is a place of pilgrimage for the future of contemporary Chinese jewelry. In the next two years, I will come to pilgrimage with expectation and hope.


Content of the exhibition project：
The 2026 VONMO Seeding. 5th Contemporary Jewelry Exhibition has attracted public attention since its launch on 16th October, 2023. As of June 10, 2024, altogether 262 artists from 38 countries have contributed their works. Upon selection by our international jury,  in a professional, fair, impartial, and open manner, 147 pieces are shortlisted for the Exhibition.

Traveling eastward to. Jieshi Mountain, seeding jewelry in the ground ─tent of this 5th exhibition: We are still collecting works from all over the world, but the only difference is that this time, there is no restriction on the subject matter and concept of the works. After we choose the works that we think are worth reviewing and appreciating again and again, we would "travel eastward to Jieshi Mountain" on the coast of China and seed them in the ground, letting them go through the baptism of nature and time, until two years later (2026, which will be the beginning of our next exhibition program of VONMO), when they will be dug up and put on an exhibition like museum antiques.

"Whether it can withstand the baptism and tempering of the years, and stand the test of time" ─ here, it refers not to the material of the works of art, but to art itself! Will the art views about which we are complacent still satisfy us after a few years, and are they still able to appeal to the audience? Dug up many years later, the contemporary jewelry works may no longer be contemporary, just like the antiques we see in museums, which become things of the past and are examined by the future. So, it's a "future exhibition": the hopes and expectations of the artists are "seeding", in which process art will be interpreted anew, and artists will produce new feelings through waiting. Contemporary jewelry (its concept or form) might already be "dead" at present, but our creative artists will bring them back to life. All the worries of our peers about the development of contemporary jewelry are the motivation for our moving forward, because "Don't worry about the long road ahead, the wind will lend you a hand".

The diversity of the ‘seeds’ was also necessary to enrich the exhibition.  All pieces exist not only in space but also in time, and each moment it presents a different state, with different people and things, thus creating different relationships, and even if it disappears completely, it will leave its ‘cause’ for the future ‘result.’ All the pieces, their mission will be bound to the land, leaving behind two years of imagination and a long time. ...... Please follow us for more information. We will continue to announce the posters of all the shortlisted artists, as well as reports on the art activities of Seeding. Thank you to all the artists and audiences who have followed and supported our exhibition project!
(*All dates are for reference only and are subject to change depending on the actual progress of the project. If there is any change in the date for participants to be involved, they will be notified separately. The organizer reserves the right to interpret relevant matters.）


Schedule：
Time of Seeding: October, 2024
Time of Unearthing: October, 2026
Time of exhibition: Expected November 2026

Curatorial team:
Publisher: Yusen Feng
Curator: Felicia Li
Sponsor: Vonmo Studio
Jury: Catarina Silva (Portugal), Gigi Mariani (Italy), Jivan Astfalck (Germany), Maria Rosa Franzin (Italy), Wang Kezhen (China), Zhao Yi (China).

About Vonmo Exhibition Projects：
Felicia Li, the director of Vonmo, and Mr Feng officially established Vonmo(万木) Art Jewelry Studio in 2016, who began the preparation in 2014. We are committed to pursuing the innovative direction of integration between contemporary art jewelry and traditional Chinese culture. Since 2019, we have curated Vonmo’s 1st Five-Year Plan, namely once a year, and a new theme for each. We associate international artists to show jewelry works at home and abroad with the aim of creating a pure, equal, fair, diverse, and professional exchange platform for contemporary art jewelry.








VONMO 2024 Seeding