Coffee & jewels

Another great project by Ana Cardim, who I have previously blogged about. This time, her social concept is on a very intimate scale, the artist and a stranger having coffee. Right now Ana is therefore looking for 15 strangers to have coffee with. Her goal is to meet with a cross-cut of people in society, and a jewel will be made following each individual meeting. This will result in an exhibition of 15 pieces, together with the documentation of the “coffee” they were based on.

The fantastic video above, made by Beatriz Cisneros, is showing the first coffee of the series. Watching this meeting makes me curious for the jewel to be. I also wonder who else is going to have a coffee with Ana. If you are going to Barcelona, you can contact her, and maybe she will design a jewel based on your conversation. If you do, it would be great to hear about your experience, so please leave a comment on this blog.

Coffee & jewels was first presented at Ana Cardims’ exhibition: “Device jewels”, which opened on September 17.
Its opening was simultaneous with JOYA-Barcelona Contemporary Jewelry Week, that consisted of several exhibitions, a small fair, awards handed out, and the start of a jewelry walk in Barcelona. I was very happy to be in the right place at the right time, and see it live! There was a very interesting jewelry-mix going on, all in one beautiful building.

The JOYA-Barcelona Contemporary Jewelry Week was largely organised by Klimt02, congratulations to you two!

The garbage pin project

The wonderful Garbage pin project has made it to my hometown Antwerp! All the 90 jewelry-artists who contributed to the project, have their 5 tiny bags of waste on display. This means that a whole Silke&the Gallery-gallery-wall is covered with 450 little garbage bags. It looks beautiful and I never thought I would say that of so much rubbish, but I guess that is part of the plan. Ana Cardim did a great job there, not only on the display of the bags, but the entire project. It really raises awareness of what we do with our waste. By putting it on display it does not just show what waste means to those 90 people, it teaches you something about everyone, it feels like you get to know them a little. To illustrate this I have chosen to display the “garbage” of the two artists, Anna Fornari and Mari Ishikawa, that have been in former broesvitrine-posts, as I am happy to see them included in this exhibit as well. The statement that goes with their work can be found on Ana Cardims’ website under artists.

Ana Cardim does not just stick to adult gallery visitors, but also invites children to come to the exhibition. To get them to really take a good look at the project, she has made assignments appropriate for their age. Wow, not only has she managed to turn an important environmental issue into a large scaled jewelry project, she is attracting kids to a gallery with it!

The gabage pin project will stay in Antwerp, Belgium at Silke&the Gallery at least until the beginning of August. After that it travels to L.A., an update of where the project goes is shown on the website under news and on the klimt02 website.

Garbage Pin

Yeah, I'm blogging again! This time about the versatile garbage pin. It's a pin with a silver structure that can hold a tiny, transparent plastic bag (the garbage bag). Once full, this bag can be removed, closed with a wire and kept as a memory of the experience. The pin questions the value of the waste and the memories attached to it, as they get combined with a precious metal! Throwing things away can be great relief, a way of cleansing your space. This garbage pin can be a call to reflect what we do with our waste. By wearing your own ‘experiences’ in a clear plastic garbage bag on your body, the piece becomes very personal. It has both an exhibitionistic and a voyeuristic side to it, because it could show what the wearer has been up to.
The contents of the bag go beyond their material properties, and may represent happiness, hope, fears or even secrets and guilt. The contents of the bag do not have to be random waste, but it can consciously be filled with symbols for contaminants of our society like war, pollution and global warming to challenge the voyeur.
Ana Cardim is the wonderful Portuguese designer of this manufactured pin. She mass-produced her pin so that many wearers could 'finish' the piece by filling the garbage bags. The piece is a kit that includes 5 spare plastic bags and wires. It even became a project called the garbage pin project (sponsored with a grant by the Portuguese ministry of culture). 100 artists teamed up to each do their own version of the Garbage Pin, by filling 5 garbage bags accompanied by photographs and a little written synopsis. This means 500 little garbage bags! Hopefully a schedule of the exhibitions will be published soon.