19–21 sept 2014
Konstepidemin Hus 10
Konstepidemins väg 6, 413 14 Göteborg, Sweden
Claudia Betancourt & Nano Pulgar run WALKA STUDIO, a creative space for creation of and education about contemporary jewellery in Santiago de Chile. They state that “we are a territory of experimentation at the crossroads of Art, Design and Craft. The language of this territory is jewelry-making” and that their mission is to expand the possible borders of the jewellery discipline in Chile and Latin America. Their work has over the past years been exhibited in Latin America, the USA, Europe, China and Australia. Website: www.walka.cl
“Matadero is a series of necklaces and pendants, jewel categories that step away from the often resorted to European brooch and allude to the prevailing ornament of the Pacific cultures. The series is the product of a long investigation about the symbolical and aesthetic characteristics of body ornamentation in the Pacific Basin until its evolution into contemporary jewellery; as well as the experimentation with new methods to work the cacho de buey or bull’s horn, a traditional material in Chilean craft that has been worked by Betancourt’s family for generations.
The relationship established between body and ornament in Matadero reveals how social custom and stigmas around the subject of death or murder of animals, affect our capacity to deem animal remains as acceptable materials, thus disregarding the origin of body ornamentation and the sacred connotations associated with it in the cultures of the Pacific Islands (Polynesia) and Latin America.
Matadero uses both bull´s horns and hooves which had been part of a previous collection dedicated to the fashion industry, delicately tinted in a faint pink colour for that occasion. The fashionable neckpieces have been deconstructed, burnt and rebuilt as entirely new pieces that fascinate and repulse. The newly transformed pieces allude to one of the darkest periods in Chilean history: the 17 year long dictatorship that was common to many other Latin American countries and which is still a source of preoccupation and reflection for many artists from the continent.”
Valeria Vallarta Siemelink