J 01 Tereza Seabra

The formal and conceptual process behind this book, which inaugurates the collection ‘J’, considers the correlations Tereza Seabra’s contemporary jewellery establishes with the cultures she experienced and the artefacts and jewellery she researched in India, some of which are part of her extensive collection, presented at The Dance of the Peacock exhibition at the Fundação Oriente in 2015.

The visual narrative is constructed on symbolic and formal affinities between the works and crosses different phases without pretending to be retrospective. It does not follow a chronological order and is successively challenged by the visual and written documentation she gathered during her research in India, inviting the reader to investigate how the artist thinks. The text is oriented by key pieces from her career and creates relationships of proximity and distance between them.

The memory of these peoples and places, which Tereza Seabra wants to keep for the future, is also the story of their past and an essential part of contemporary jewellery, which Tereza considers and makes as one of the pioneers and key figures in its history. Through images that document her work, often on her body, of what she writes and tells us, we get to know the world and its critical state with more rigour. As she says, ‘like clothing but even more so, jewellery holds immense symbolism and deep references to an era and the way we live.’ It transcends us.