Designers: Rosalba Balsamo, Daria Borovkova, Florence Croisier, Clara del Papa, Marion Delarue, Eleonora Ghilardi, Elie Hirsch, Florence Jaquet, Laberintho, Chiara Lucato, Letizia Maggio, Paola Mirai, ki Izumi, Nazan Pak, Enrica Prazzoli, Lavinia Rossetti, Federica Sala, Giulia Savino, María Ignacia Walker Guzmán, Caterina Zanca.
Curated by Ilaria Ruggiero
Adornment-Contemporary Jewellery Exhibition is the section of the Venice Design Biennial devoted to contemporary jewellery. The theme of 2016 was "The shape of wearable art": a jewel that explores the typical formal boundaries of the body to challenge the mere fit and cross them. The exhibition expanded the fluid and wide boundaries of wearable art, seeking the original meaning of the ornament as a symbol of deep identification and belonging, on a social and spiritual level, to a specific community.
Especially in 2016, the pieces were selected according to their shapes, design and clever use of materials, and for their capacity to challenge the conventional space of fit and to cross it unexpectedly, entering in dialogue with the body. All the pieces demonstrated a talent to unveil new senses and meanings tied to the identity of the individual, both as a human being and as a social being, member of a group.
Fourteen international jewel artists and designers exhibited their works which ranged from delicate minimal creations to sculptural work.
Completing the show, there was also a selection of works by six of the students graduated in 2016 on the Master of Fine Arts in Jewellery and Body Ornament from ALCHIMIA, the prestigious Florentine contemporary jewellery school. The idea behind the student projects was to re-appropriate some of those symbolic and anthropological values that the jewel has always had since the ancient times of its origins.
Lucia Massei, Director of the school, highlights the role of the jewel as the clearest form of gift; the jewel is one of the oldest responses to an aesthetic and emotional human impulse, it has a special potentiality of communication and allows to better define the identity of the wearer within a social context.
Ph. Cristina Galliena Bohman