Returning to our scheduled programming, after that short break in transmission:
On Saturday, April 12th, my last full day in Mexico, I got to hang out with Sin Título, (the name means Untitled in Spanish) a jewellery collective from Mexico City. Once again I met with Alberto Dávila, Cristina Celis, Raquel Bessudo, Holinka Escudero, Zinna Rudman and Fernanda Barba, hot on the heels of our first meeting at the opening of Joyaviva.
Together, along with Kevin Murray (and you might spot TurboNerd in some of the pictures too) we had a chat about life in the trenches for jewellery artists, and what they have been up to, as a group, to raise the profile of ‘our kind of jewels’ in Mexico. Owing to a section in my presentation that focussed on how Jill and my work with Part B influenced the C3 project (just as a recap – The Joyaviva exhibition/C3 project was my reason for being in Mexico as it is on display in Mexico City), we all realised that we had a lot to talk about.
They have come together as a group to instigate their own installations and happenings, and have had success in planting their jewellery dispensing machine in a couple of situations – including a gallery during an opening – with two editions of works. I was very chuffed to be given the opportunity to have a go at it myself, and I scored a Meteorite ring by Cristina and a magnetic Scarab pin by Zinna (which got me frisked at Minneapolis airport just this Sunday – should have worn Cristina’s ceramic ring!), while Turbo was seen sporting an ear cuff courtesy of Fernanda.
You might notice that all the jewels are black; that’s because the edition of the dispenser they were kind enough to bring to the Museum is entitled ‘Black is the New Gold’. Makers responded to the theme (itself devised to set apart ‘art’ from ‘regular’ jewellery) in varying ways – most with witty puns on the title – and I wish I was smart enough to have written it all down because now I have forgotten the ties that linked the works to that theme, aside from the obvious that all the work was black. But, as always, the internet to the rescue! As you can see, they even painted black the tokens used for insertion into the machine. Attention to detail, folks… All jewels come with a small sheet of paper detailing the artist, name of the work and description of the materials, with the Sin Título name and logo “ ” on the obverse.
In return for their kindness in gifting me their dark charms and a bit of Sin Título swag – yup, be jealous 😉 – there was a mass ‘charming’, when I distributed some “Lighten Up” and “Battery Backup” charms, with most of the corresponding report cards I filled in for each charm activation asking for a little bit of backup to continue the good fight of getting the word of ‘the new jewellery’ into the world.
You can check out Sin Título via the facebooks, and there is some interesting tweets coming out of several members’ accounts, including Zinna Rudman, Fernanda Barba and Holinka Escudero’s JEWELLERY ACTIVIST (great title!) and of course, the untitled one itself, Sin Título.
Here’s another snapshot of their practice, with thanks to the Joyaviva Website, while below are some actual snapshots, all images courtesy of Sin Título, for which I thank them profusely as I completely neglected to take any photos.
Carpe amuletum!
