I do not ask whether a piece is jewellery or sculpture. I ask whether it has presence, whether it has something to say. An interview with Trinidad Contreras

Versión en Español - Spanish version      

Could you tell us about your background, your practice, and how your collaboration with Hannah Gallery began? In what ways do you feel your work resonates with the gallery's curatorial approach?
Trinidad Contreras: I see myself as a curious person, someone who needs to make things with her hands. I studied at Escola Massana in Barcelona, and my journey began in the field of art jewellery, a world that taught me how to think through materials and listen to what they have to say. It was there, in 2009, that I first encountered porcelain, an experience that marked the beginning of everything.

Over the years, I came to understand what had drawn me so strongly to that material: the tension between fragility and resilience, between control and surprise. That duality resonated with everything I wanted to explore. I gradually began working more extensively with ceramic materials, not as an end in themselves but as a language, and that process shaped the path that has led me to where I am today: the merging of two disciplines that seemingly belong to different worlds, jewellery and ceramics, yet share the same essence. Both demand technical skill, close attention to detail and, at the same time, a willingness to be surprised by what emerges during the process.

My connection with Hannah Gallery developed very naturally. Leo and Amador have known my work since the beginning and have followed its evolution over the years. In 2025, they invited me to create a solo exhibition, which opened on 20 May. It felt perfectly aligned with the stage I was at in my practice. I needed to focus my attention, with greater maturity, in a single direction. Their encouragement also gave me the confidence to take risks and explore something new.

The starting point was a group of existing pieces and a concept, a possible title, that opened up a very clear direction for the work. Those two elements allowed me to move freely while remaining grounded in a familiar visual language. The result is a series of five sculptural works that open a new dialogue within my practice.

I feel that my work resonates with Hannah Gallery's curatorial vision because we share a similar understanding of contemporary jewellery: not as ornament or accessory, but as an art form with conceptual and emotional depth. We are both interested in that border territory where craft, design and the visual arts challenge one another, where an object can be intimate and monumental, functional and completely free at the same time.


Trinidad Contreras. Brooch: Untitled, 2023. Porcelain, silver, gold, steel. Photo by Guillem Fernández-Huerta.


Porcelain is a demanding, unpredictable and delicate material to master. Yet in the works presented here, one can perceive both a highly controlled approach, almost as if the material had been worked like stone (whether natural or reconstructed), and a more empirical one, where the trace of the hand remains visible. How has this duality developed within your practice? Do you see these two approaches as complementary, as two facets of the same research?
My work has been connected to porcelain from the very beginning and, over time, has expanded to include other clay bodies such as stoneware. What fascinates me about these materials is their life cycle, the transformation that forms an integral part of my creative process. I begin with something soft and malleable, deeply connected to water, sometimes almost liquid in its state, and after passing through fire, it becomes something as hard and enduring as stone or glass.

I also value the autonomy that ceramics gives me as a primary material. Everything happens within my own studio, from the first contact with wet clay through to firing, finishing and every detail of the surface. Having complete control over the process allows me to experiment freely and embrace the risks that come with it.

It is precisely within that freedom that the duality you mention emerges. On one hand, there is a part of me that deeply enjoys control: filing, sanding and polishing until the surface no longer resembles clay and begins to evoke stone or mineral formations. There is a particular satisfaction in taking the material to that point of silence, where the hand disappears, and only the form remains.

On the other hand, I feel an equally strong need to let go, to allow traces of the process to remain visible: the imprint of the hand, the natural folds of wet clay, the imperfection of a gesture or the appearance of a crack. These marks become permanently embedded in the piece, giving it something ancient, almost geological. The passage of time becomes visible, and that interests me just as much as the final result.

I do not see these two approaches as opposites, but as complementary aspects of the same investigation.. I believe a work gains depth when it contains that tension between the human desire to master a material and a respect for its own free and unpredictable nature. Ultimately, it may also be a conversation between what we seek to control and what we accept will always escape us.


Solid Waves by Trinidad Contreras at Hannah Gallery. May-July 2026. 


The works presented seem to exist somewhere between jewellery, object and sculpture, and at times even evoke totems or amulets. How would you define their status? Is this ambiguity between different categories intentional?
A piece may begin at the scale of a sculpture intended to inhabit a space and yet, on closer inspection, reveal the care, attention and meticulous detail of a piece of jewellery. The reverse is also true: many of my jewellery pieces are conceived as small wearable sculptures. This movement between scales has been present from the beginning, and I believe it brings coherence to my entire trajectory.

The fact that some of these works evoke totems or amulets is not accidental. I am deeply drawn to the idea that objects can carry a strong symbolic and emotional charge, a presence that connects with the viewer as though they were imbued with history. In that sense, the category matters less than the intensity.I do not ask whether a piece is jewellery or sculpture; I ask whether it has presence, whether it has something to say.

Moving into larger formats has not changed my way of seeing, but it has required me to establish a very different physical and technical dialogue with the material. The main challenge has been structural: venturing into new dimensions, considerable thicknesses and weights that go beyond my previous experience with ceramics.

In jewellery, ergonomics are a determining factor, which is why I work with thin walls and lightweight structures that can be comfortably worn on the body. In sculpture, however, that fragility becomes solidity. Large-scale works are sometimes dense and heavy, and this radically changes the rhythm of the studio. A solid sculpture requires an extremely slow drying process in order to avoid internal tensions. Success depends on respecting both the material and its timing.

Beyond scale, my way of conceiving a work has remained unchanged. These sculptures are intended to be experienced in the round, exactly as I approach jewellery, where every angle matters, including those that are not immediately visible. The spirit of my original discipline remains present in these larger works through highly precise details, such as the gold and silver inlays that appear within some of the volumes.
In that sense, I still consider this work to be deeply connected to jewellery: my philosophy and sensitivity have not changed, only the technical solutions required by the scale.

What does change is the relationship with the viewer. In smaller works, detail is intimate and discovered through proximity and touch. In larger works, the finish must also engage with distance, retaining its sense of refinement while projecting the strength of the volume into space.


Trinidad Contreras. Ring: Untitled, 2026. Porcelain, enamel, and gold lustre. Silver hallmark. Photo by: Guillem Fernández-Huerta.


In your statement, you mention the idea of avoiding repetition without losing the essence of your work. Do you think an artist needs to constantly reinvent themselves in order to remain relevant? What would you identify as the essence of your work? And within your own practice, how do you find a balance between continuity and change?
I do not believe that an artist needs to constantly reinvent themselves simply to present something new every season. That pressure feels more like external noise than a genuine necessity. Having said that, I do believe deeply in evolution. When you limit yourself to repeating what you already know works, the work begins to lose its soul. It shows. The pieces may remain technically accomplished, but they become emotionally empty.

If I had to define the essence of my work, I would say it lies in a constant curiosity towards materials, processes and everything I have yet to learn. Added to that is a certain obsession with detail, even those details that are not immediately visible. That foundation never changes. It is what I recognise as my own, regardless of the format, scale or material I am working with.

I find the balance between continuity and change quite naturally through the daily reality of the studio. Continuity comes from my own visual language: the techniques I have mastered, the forms that have been part of my vocabulary for years, and the way I relate to clay. It provides a secure foundation and, precisely because it is secure, it allows me to take risks from within it.

Change enters through experimentation: testing thicknesses I have never attempted before, radically altering scale, or incorporating new gestures and techniques into my practice. These are not arbitrary decisions, but developments that emerge from a genuine desire to push the work further.
In this way, the work continues to grow and, importantly, continues to surprise me. Sometimes I begin with familiar gestures, but I am always looking a little further ahead.



Solid Waves by Trinidad Contreras Opening at Hannah Gallery. 20 May 2026. 


What references, influences or sources of inspiration informed the development of this exhibition?
The references that influenced this exhibition are varied, yet they all share a common thread: the relationship between matter and time.
My primary source of inspiration is nature in its most geological dimension. I am fascinated by the way water, wind and the pressure of the earth can sculpt rock, create textures that no human hand could anticipate and transform entire landscapes over centuries. There is a particular kind of force in these processes that interests me. It is not violent, but patient, cumulative and silent. I wanted to translate something of that tectonic energy into the delicacy of ceramics, to find a way for a work to contain that sense of geological time.

This leads to the other major reference behind the exhibition: time itself, and what it does to memory. I am interested in traces, imprints and the marks left by a presence upon matter. The way an object becomes permeated by what has been in contact with it. Memory operates in a similar way, not as a fixed archive, but as something alive that changes and is rewritten each time we return to it.

As time passes, the memory of an experience is no longer the same as it was when it was first lived. It becomes something else, shaped from the same material but transformed into a different form.

This idea led me to think of the works not simply as ceramic forms, but as objects of memory: pieces that preserve traces, reveal the marks of their own transformation, and seem to attempt to hold on to something that inevitably slips away. As though stopping time were impossible, but inscribing it into matter might offer a way of containing it.


Solid Waves is your first exhibition with Hannah Gallery. Could you tell us about the process of developing a solo exhibition: selecting the works, building the overall narrative, and the ways in which your collaboration with the gallery influenced that process?
Developing my first solo exhibition with Hannah Gallery has been an intense and deeply rewarding process. It was never simply a matter of bringing together my most recent works and placing them within a gallery space. Rather, it was about constructing a narrative, finding the thread that connects the works and allows the exhibition to speak with a single voice.

From that point onwards, the project became an ongoing dialogue with the gallery. Working with Leo and Amador means having the benefit of an experienced and critical external perspective, one that can view the work from a distance that I, as its maker, cannot always achieve. Together, we explored different possibilities, selecting and discarding paths until we found a genuine coherence between the jewellery pieces and the new sculptural works.

It was important that the shift in scale did not feel like a rupture, but rather like a natural evolution within the same practice. The exhibition needed to reflect that continuity. The final result is the product of this collaboration: the meeting of my creative world in the studio with the gallery's spatial and curatorial vision. I am certain that, had I developed this project entirely on my own, the outcome would have been different. Dialogue and mutual trust were essential in bringing the project to life.


Trinidad Contreras. Sculpture: Untitled, 2026. Various types of stoneware, enamels, cement, polyurethane, silver inlays and gold luster. Photo by Guillem Fernández-Huerta.