Dead Souls. Desire and Memory in the Jewelry of Keith Lewis

Since the late 1980s the American artist Keith Lewis (*1959) has been exploring queer identity and politics in his narrative jewelry. And sensitive topics are not excluded. For example in his groundbreaking series of memorial jewelry, which addresses the effects of the AIDS crisis on himself and his community.

Sometimes for Lewis it is just about the enjoyment, as Damian Skinner writes: His jewelry “gives pleasure, delighting anyone … who enjoys looking at images of sex, or who fi nds it exciting to wear adornment on their body that’s all about what happens when bodies get physical, when they get hard, when they get off.”

Lewis himself distinguishes several different groups of jewelry pieces within his oeuvre: fi gurative works that  thematize fi rst and foremost the AIDs pandemic and gay identity in the age of HIV; somewhat traditionally looking works that serve established conventions in order to address—from a predominantly gay, male perspective—detailed questions of sexuality, bodies, loss, and memory; a small series of works that engage with his personal relationship to Brazil and his long-term partner in S.o Paolo; and the latest work, The Saddest Aisle, which sets itself apart from the utilitarian and narrative nature of his early works.

Lewis’s often witty, sometimes confusing, frequently erotic, and surprisingly moving jewelry is an act of remembrance and experience—and a passionate affi rmation that desire and enjoyment can overcome historical separations as well as connect past with present.

Alongside almost 150 object photos, the monograph, which is divided into the two sections “Sex” and “History,” includes texts by Damian Skinner and four lectures by Keith Lewis on his key subjects.