Jiro Kamata: VOICES

By deploying an array of expressive techniques, dominated by both reflection and communication, Jiro Kamata has carved out a unique position while participating in numerous international shows. The voices that lend the exhibition its name emerge through sound, attitude, identity and expression, and point to an ongoing story that is preserved and continued.


Jiro Kamata (*1978) was born into a family of Japanese jewellers. Yet in his own artistic jewellery work, he turns his back on classical jewellery both aesthetically and conceptually, questioning traditional production methods and examining optical phenomena with regard to the perception of value.

Instead of using minerals and gemstones that have been mined under unfavourable conditions, he recycles partially used materials and found objects into rings, brooches and pendants, contrasting classic material extraction with the practice of material preservation.
The bedrock of his work is the concept of experienced memories; only by experiencing and interacting with his jewellery pieces do they gain their true value. In doing so Kamata keeps the entire process in his sight, from production to the pieces’ performance as worn on the bodies of the wearers.

The jewellery artist’s interest is piqued, above all, by objects and materials coupled with human perception: first, bands of transparent adhesive tape which absorb the surroundings and are then transformed – rerolled – as rings into wearable and memorable jewellery items, later lenses and mirrors that grant us insights, outlooks and perspectives.

The jewellery pieces unite the wearers with their environment by dint of visual interconnections and at the same time challenge assumed positions: how do we see the world, and how, in fact, does the world see us?

The clarity and splendour of Kamata’s works finds balance in the publication’s reduced design comprising different types of paper. The essays, printed in silver on uncoated paper and preceded by the comprehensive illustrated section, locate Kamata’s work in its cultural, jewellery-related and art historical context.

An exceptional book on an extraordinary conceptual position in contemporary auteur jewellery.


Concept and graphic design: Studio Amanda Haas, Berlin.

Book price: 44 €
>> Discount price on pre-orders: 35 € (Signed copies by the author).