HABLA JOYA, HABLA. Teoría y práctica del concepto en joyería y escultura

Through a theoretical and practical study, the book offers a framework for creating pieces with formal and linguistic coherence, providing an essay manual for creators, as well as for anyone interested in interpreting and delving deeper into jewellery that speaks.


Is a jewel an object that is simply worn? Or is it a work of art? When does it cease to be a jewel and become a sculpture, an installation, a performance? This volume not only examines these questions but also invites us to formulate new ones and opens the way for many reflections. Furthermore, Mar introduces an interesting system of analysis that allows us to assess whether concepts fit the formal characteristics of the piece or vice versa, ensuring coherence between idea, form, and material. The author invites us to view jewelry as a living archive: a testament to memories and meanings, an object that preserves the memory and context in which it existed, and that stores gestures and emotions in its form. Why? What role do emotions play in jewelry? How are memories inscribed on objects? How does a material influence or help tell a story? But this book doesn't just theorize; it's also a vast bank of materials and references through which the reader can explore a corpus of works that will help them understand all these ideas. Specific cases that explore how jewelry has crossed its conventional boundaries to dialogue with contemporary art, and in which we find pieces that not only adorn the body, but also transform it; jewels that interrogate space, that are edible, that grow, that do not seek to be eternal.
 
Many years of research and immense passion still continue to ask Mar today: What new materials, technologies, and contexts can redefine jewelry? How will this language evolve in a world where the boundaries between design, art, and craftsmanship are increasingly blurred? These questions become an invitation to rethink jewelry from a different perspective, with different eyes. Not as a field subordinate to art or as a discipline devoid of conceptual experimentation, but as a visual language of its own, a territory of infinite possibilities.
 
This is, ultimately, a book for those who wish to look beyond, for those who believe that jewelry not only adorns, but speaks. HABLA JOYA, HABLA. We are ready to listen.
 
/Sara Vilar Garcia, Polytechnic University of Valencia.
 

About the author

Mar Juan Tortosa (Llocnou d'en Fenollet, 1990) is a visual artist, researcher, and professor with a degree in Fine Arts (UPV), certified in Jewelry (CEJC), and a PhD in Art: Production and Research (Excellent, Cum Laude) (UPV). She has received six awards for best academic record in Fine Arts, an extraordinary award for her Doctoral Thesis, and a postdoctoral fellowship in art as a tool for communication and awareness. She has taught at art schools and universities in Spain, Portugal, Belgium and the United States. Her works have been exhibited in museums such as the CCCC, IVAM, La Nau Cultural Center, DHub Barcelona, ​​Museu de São Roque and MUDE. From the spheres of art, research and teaching, her work revolves around the communication of stories, narratives and reflections through visual language, specifically in the field of sculpture articulated with the social, historical and popular cultural world.

www.marjuantortosa.com