COLLOQUIUM
 
BODY
LAUREN KALMAN: BODYHOOD AND JEWELLERINESS
Liesbeth den Besten
BODY AND JEWEL: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE TENSIONS
Ana Paula de Campos
THE JEWELLERY AS A MEANS OF RAISING THE AWARENESS
OF THE BODY AND HIS SURROUNDING SPACE
Bárbara Coutinho
Moderated by João Paulo Queiroz
16 September, Thursday
15h–18h
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Liesbeth den Besten: Lauren Kalman, «But if Crime is Beautiful», 2014. Cranbrook Art Museum. Photo: Lauren Kalman.
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Liesbeth den Besten: Lauren Kalman, «But if Crime is Beautiful», 2014. Cranbrook Art Museum. Photo: Lauren Kalman.
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LAUREN KALMAN – BODYHOOD AND JEWELLERINESS. During the 1960s–80s, the body helped to liberate jewellery from ornamental, representational, and financial requirements that had been taken for granted since time immemorial. Artists such as Gijs Bakker + Emmy van Leersum (1960s/70s), Peter Skubic (1970s), Otto Künzli and Gerd Rothmann (1982), added a new perspective to the inside, outside and perception of the body. For some time, the idea of jewellery as an object that reflects fashion, taste, and the financial and moral condition of the client, seemed obsolete and something we had to resist. In this process the body replaced the person or client. The body changed from the necessary framework to hang a piece on or from, into a performative object. For various reasons (which I cannot go into further here), this development was nipped in the bud before it could actually blossom. A representative of a younger generation who takes the body as an object of research, in quite a radical way, is Lauren Kalman. Kalman (1980) is an American interdisciplinary artist who uses her body, photography, sculpture, jewellery, performances, and installations to test the borders of her body, evoke feelings of repulsion, and express ideas about feminism, beauty, sexuality, and ornament. She studied jewellery and metalsmithing, foundry (chasing and welding), art and technology. Her work, no matter its size or the medium she uses, has a degree of jewelleriness that makes it unique in the context of Body Art and Feminist Art. In my lecture I will shortly introduce approaches to the body in the history of contemporary jewellery and then move to Lauren Kalman, to analyse the role of jewellery in her Body Art.  
 
LIESBETH DEN BESTEN (Amsterdam, 1956) is an art historian specialist in the field of contemporary jewellery. She has curated exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad. From 1992 to 2016 she worked for the Françoise van de Bosch Fundation, as its secretary, and from 2000 as the chairperson. She was a member of the Art Jewelry Forum Board and Publication Committee from 2013 to 2019. She is an advisory board member of the Journal of Jewellery Research. Since 2016 she lectures jewellery history at Sint Lucas Academy in Antwerp, Belgium. Together with Gijs Bakker, Ted Noten and Ruudt Peters, she is involved in founding an MA in jewellery: MASieraad. The temporary 2-years program MA Challenging Jewellery (2018-2020) at Sandberg Institute Amsterdam was the first result. As of 2021-2022 a new permanent masterclass programme MASieraad Hasselt-Amsterdam starts at PXL-MAD School of Arts in Hasselt, Belgium. Den Besten and the other initiators are actively involved in the education at MASieraad H-A. Den Besten is the author of a great many publications on crafts, and contemporary jewellery design. In 2011 her bestselling On Jewellery, a compendium of international contemporary art jewellery was published by arnoldsche Art Publishers.
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Ana Paula Campos: Armelle Blary, «Daphné», 2005. Foto: Alain Hatat In DENIS-MOREL, Barbara (org – «Corps Recomposés: Greffe et Art Contemporain», Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2015.
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Ana Paula Campos: Armelle Blary, «Daphné», 2005. Foto: Alain Hatat In DENIS-MOREL, Barbara (org – «Corps Recomposés: Greffe et Art Contemporain», Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2015.
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BODY AND JEWEL: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE TENSIONS. If, in the mid-1960s/1970s, a new jewellery emerged in line with a «body revolution», how did the body-jewel relationship take shape in different times? That was the question that kick-started my post-doctoral research, whose challenge was to identify different conceptions of body and subjectivity, linking them to jewels and paying particular attention to the functions and social meanings of the ornaments. The purpose of this lecture is to present some aspects of this research and invite us to rethink the body-jewellery pair from the different contexts and historical meanings that shaped and were expressed by this encounter in the West. This approach highlights the forces that act on the relationship between body and jewel, as well as those mobilized from it. In that regard, to examine the meanings that body and jewel have been forging over time implies to consider the power relations arising from them, going beyond the naturalisation of several discourses. It should be noted that this is not a simple association between elements, but the making of something new and distinct, capable of exceeding the intrinsic meanings of both body and jewel, through the tensions that are produced between them. Finally, expanding the perspective of these relationships and, why not, disturbing some beliefs, we will take the subject of this biennial – Cold Sweat – as a trigger to raise questions about the future of the body-jewellery relationship, especially in the face of this pandemic or post pandemic scenario, with its unprecedented aspects in human history.  
 
ANA PAULA DE CAMPOS (Campinas, 1969) ) completed her Post-Doctoral Studies ‘Body, Jewellery Piece and Identity: Narratives going backwards’ in Psychology in 2018, a PhD in ‘Art Jewellery: a personal cartography’ in Arts in 2011, a Masters degree in ´Brazilian Contemporary Jewellery: reflecting on the viewpoints of some artists’, in Education Art and History of Culture in 1997 and a Bachelor of Industrial Design in 1989. For over twenty five years she has been engaged in academic, cultural and research activities in the areas of design, fashion and art. As a researcher and jewellery artist, she has also participated in exhibitions, given lectures and published several articles regarding adornments, materials and body. Linking jewellery with other fields of knowledge to create a transversal way of thinking and making has become her main research interest and conceptual framework in teaching and creation practices.
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Ana Albuquerque, Colar | Necklace A Medida do Palmo - do Coração ao Umbigo - do Partilhar ao Centrar, 2018. MUDE.J.0088. ©MUDE_Luisa Ferreira, 2020
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Ana Albuquerque, Colar | Necklace A Medida do Palmo - do Coração ao Umbigo - do Partilhar ao Centrar, 2018. MUDE.J.0088. ©MUDE_Luisa Ferreira, 2020
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THE JEWELLERY AS A MEANS OF RAISING THE AWARENESS OF THE BODY AND HIS SURROUNDING SPA. The knowledge of the body occupies a central place in man's search of himself and his relationship with the other, the nature, the world around him and the surrounding objects. Considered as a unit of measure, the body has been throughout history the basis for the definition of idealised systems and models, as well as being an essential reference for the arts and for the design of objects, constructions, places and cities. We are interested in looking at the conceptual and critical nature of contemporary jewellery, in relation with other artistic manifestations, to analyse the value that jewellery has, as a corporalised object, for the awareness of the body and the surrounding space. To this end, we analyse the work of some artists and designers in Portugal, from different generations, who have taken the body as the main object of reflection to understand the different figurations it has assumed. The aim is to reflect on how these proposals highlight the way in which the concept of the body is understood today, taking into consideration issues of identity and perception of reality.
 
BÁRBARA COUTINHO (Lisbon, 1971) is an art historian, director and programmer of MUDE – Museu do Design e da Moda since 2006, and a Guest Assistant Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico (University of Lisbon), where she teaches architecture theory and history. She has a degree in History of Art, a Master's degree in Contemporary Art History, Post-graduate degree in Art History Education and holds a PhD on culture and technology in Architecture with the thesis The Exhibition Space as a “Total Work of Art” – The Museum of the 21st century, a place for a global aesthetic experience’. Her work is divided between teaching, curatorship and writing, having as main research field museology, curatorial practice and exhibition space, with the focus on the interrelationships between design, contemporary arts and architecture.
JOÃO PAULO QUEIROZ (Aveiro, 1966) did is BA in Painting from the Lisbon School of Fine Arts, MA in Communication from ISCTE Lisbon and PhD in Fine Arts from the University of Lisbon. He is a Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts, at the University of Lisbon, at the PhD in Teaching at the University of Porto and the PhD in Fine Arts at the University of Seville. He coordinates the International Congress CSO – Creators over Other works (annually since 2010) e directs the academic magazines Estúdio, Gama, and Croma. He is coordinator of the Matéria–Prima Congress, Practices of Visual Arts in Primary and Secondary Teaching (annually, since 2012). He is a member of several commissions, scientific and evaluation panels, editorial boards and consultant to the FCT (Portugal). He is currently president of the Centre for Studies and Research in Fine Arts (CIEBA) and President of the National Society of Fine Arts (Portugal). With several solo painting exhibitions, in 2004 he was distinguished by the National Academy of Fine Arts with the Gustavo Cordeiro Ramos Painting Prize.