Ana Cardim

Bio

Artist, theorist, curator and designer, Ana Cardim was born in Lisbon in 1975 and expressed, from an early age, her desire to theorize and create aesthetic realities beyond the common borders of contemporary jewellery. With an intensive Performative Arts Course and a High degree in Art History - both held in Lisbon, she took a Master in Theory and Esthetics of Contemporary Arts at the University of Barcelona and had solid parallel training in Jewellery field, having attended Escola Massana, California College of the Arts, Contacto Directo and Ar.Co.
 

Statement

As an Artist, I have mainly opted to explore the jewellery potential as a platform for sociability and /or a place of discussion, and existential-philosophic reflection. The objects generated by my creative process can be understood as “device jewels” which stimulate dynamic dialogues – creating and recreating critical opinion in the public sphere. In aesthetic and conceptual terms, these objects transgress the common function of body adornments and acquire a political value through a transdisciplinary process. They can be understood as “Vehicles of Social Intervention” whose intention is to catalyze a redistribution of value meaning and propose new ways of constructing meaning in the face of a predominantly urban contemporary world in its distinct – and very pathological – social and environmental aspects.

In parallel to my Artistic Work, I launched my own jewellery design brand as a performative extension of my ideologic goals, providing it as a support platform for the most urgent Humanitarian causes through the sales of my jewels. I built this structure in order to achieve, first and foremost, my own Freedom and Independence as a Woman and simultaneously to emphasize the importance of reconstructing Feminine Identity to a global change of mentalities as an imperatively and really necessary step towards aesthetic, ethical, political and cultural redefinition in the context of contemporary society.  
 
As a Jewellery Designer, I highlight the most aesthetic aspect of my creations following criteria of lightness and formal debugging that bet on an asymmetrical geometry lending new forms to the eternal feminine. Most of my designs draw aesthetic affinities with lines of force present in urban environments linked to modern and contemporary architecture.
 
The concept of jewellery participates as a particle of luminous expression in the brilliant amplitude of the Creator’s breath and invites reflection: jewellery is everything that we value, or devalue; by social convention, it mirrors us as a society consumed by the false shine of power, a pathology that has led us to the total devaluation of True Human Values. We are the jewels in our treasure chest: inside.
All my work stems from the objective and programmatic reformulation of a new social and human protocol, founded on conjunct action and activated, catalyzed and empowered by aesthetic shared devices.

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