Sponsored by California College of the Arts and The Rotasa Foundation
Marginalized from mainstream culture, contemporary jewelers have started colonizing the spaces available to them to (re)define their practices and the field at large.
In this joint lecture, Liesbeth den Besten and Benjamin Lignel, contributors to Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective, look at two facets of this recent transformation.
Den Besten discusses participatory projects and projects that question issues of value and show how these strategies move away from “object-hood” toward “jewelry-ness.” Lignel shows examples of how the seven “spaces of jewelry”—discussed in part one of Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective—are occupied differently by makers around the world and focuses on the page as a space of production. The resulting overview points to a craft that often forgets its craft roots in order to dissolve itself and disseminate into the world.
To purchase Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective, please visit AJF’s bookstore.
