"META Ti": Exploring the Harmonious Polyphony of Art Jewelry
- niki stylianou
- Apr 2, 2024
- 9 min read
by Niki Stylianou
Tell me, how did you meet each other?
We met attending the art jewelry courses that were organized and tutored by Anastasia Kandaraki at Anamma Jewelry School. Then, while working on a common concept of "the Roots" for the exhibition that would celebrate the ten-year anniversary of Anamma, we got to know each other in a more profound way, and the question of what we would do next after the successful Roots exhibition made us into a group.
How did you decide to collaborate?
We matched together naturally by the converging path of our dreams and common quests. We share a common need to express ourselves through contemporary jewelry, an urge to be creative, and to evolve through working in a group. In contrast to the alienation that contemporary social conditions can create, we dream of our collective work to be the nest through which every single one of us will find support, acceptance, feedback, interaction, and inspiration. We aspire for the warmth of our creative work to become the fertile ground where new ideas can flourish; we hope each one of us is encouraged and empowered so that she can open new paths, and therefore discover stimuli to experiment with new materials. We respect the individuality of each member of the group; thus, this creates a harmonious polyphony.
What is your common love?
We love art jewelry; we are united and motivated by this love. It's always this love that encourages us to go on and move on, especially in difficult times of the creative process; it excites us when we research a given project, and it makes us passionate about experimenting with new materials. It's the process of an idea—inspired by current affairs, nature, metaphysics, love, social relations, or personal experiences—that gets its shape out of our whole being that we love, and just because it embodies universal symbolism, it can be perceived broadly.
How do you find balance in the group but at the same time protect each other's authenticity?
Although it may sound absurd, our dissimilarity makes part of our similarity and keeps our equilibrium. We work as an ensemble: each part of the whole contributes to the creation of the whole. We believe that togetherness doesn't mean collective alignment. As it generally happens in the world where every person is unique but at the same time resembles other people, the same happens in our group where our visible differences and contradictions play a complementary part. By respecting each member's uniqueness, ideas, way of thinking, beliefs, and aesthetics, we ensure her authenticity as a person, and therefore, the authenticity of the objects created by each one of us is preserved.
"Meta Ti" (What's Next). What is the comment that is implied here? Is it about a statement or is it about a time limit that is given and is getting postponed continuously?
In present times, we constantly look for more available time. Every artist, when he completes the creation and the presentation of a work of art, feels as if he entered an empty zone. It's the role of time again that comes to bridge the creator's feelings of emptiness with the next presented work. So that explains the phrase "what happens after that?". If Proust is in search of lost time, if time is the fourth dimension, if time controls our life, we try to creatively take into our hands the time that leads us to what is next. In the infinite time flow, we come across an existential stalemate of answers; this is why we have become the question so that we can look for and act out the possible answers. Our collective's name, "Meta Ti", stands both as a statement and as something new that is born and gets evolved continuously.
How important is the use of a materia prima and its qualities for you? Do you choose among materials that will serve your idea or do you dedicate yourselves to ideas that impose themselves on the material?
Although each one of us has a different approach when working on a project, the selection of the material is of crucial importance. Each one of us, in order to follow the content of her ideas, chooses to work with materials or creates the materials that can best represent the narrative. It can be chosen as the symbol that implies the idea or, vice versa, the material chosen can lead to the story that could be narrated.
How important is the body in the creative process and which body is more important: the one that creates, the one that wears, or the one that looks at the piece of jewelry?
The body is our topos, our natural space in which the material, spiritual, and psychological existences co-exist. The relation between the body and a piece of jewelry is interlinked. The body is the base where all life experiences are registered upon, and this forms inspiration for the creation of conceptual art jewelry. A piece of conceptual jewelry expresses an idea inspired by the memory of the body; it opens a new space out of it with its form and its symbolic material. The body wears a piece of jewelry as its precious piece out of it, makes it part of it in an externalized way, and becomes the way of communication between the one who wears it and the one who looks at it. There is an invisible energy thread that interminably connects the creator's body with the one that wears it and the one who observes it: the idea that a piece of jewelry expresses is the thread that connects three bodies of equal importance.
So you make wearable objects or objects that evoke thoughts, emotions, reactions?
Whether an object is wearable or not is subjective. The majority of people who are not accustomed to art jewelry may think that our jewelry is not wearable. As it happens in every work of art, regardless of the fact that it is wearable or not, we aim for our jewelry to be the outcome of our knowledge, artistic awareness, and preciseness, to contain symbolism, commentary, continuity, and redemption—all these elements that contribute to it being a diode of communication between the transmitter and the receiver. When an artist exceeds their creative limits concerning the efficiency in representing an idea, and at the same time when the audience perceives this excess, then the unfamiliar becomes familiar. It's then that the audience can understand the revealing power of the piece of art and, consequently, there is an emotional reaction to it.
What are your future plans?
The more we work together, the easier it becomes to know each other, to evolve and mature together artistically. We would like, through our constant and continuous presence in exhibitions, to bring people who are not familiar with art jewelry to know it. We aim to communicate our group's point of view and aesthetics regarding contemporary jewelry and to make it part of everyday life. We hope that the person who chooses one of our pieces of jewelry will be able to relate to it and feel expressed in the same way as we do through that particular object. We invite you to stay tuned in and follow our art projects and our activities.
The Collective.
Barbara Vidalaki
Through my creations, I seek to express the complexity that characterizes human relationships, transforming intangible emotions into form and image. I process fragments of memory, thoughts, feelings, and related images from everyday life, so as to arrive at the original idea. Creation represents for me a process of discovering and mapping hidden memories and feelings, leading to my personal development. I view jewelry as a means of expression and a declaration of identity. I believe that when placed in the appropriate point on the body, it highlights, adorns, accompanies, and protects the wearer, while at the same time, it interacts with the viewer by generating feelings and thoughts, provoking participation. In my work, I love contrasting materials, curved shapes with recesses and cavities. Nature, fairy tales, folklore, and cultural heritage are my inspiration.
Anastasia Kandaraki
I am inspired by everyday life and my surroundings, as well as social interactions and human values. I usually work with hard materials, such as silver, steel, bone, and wood. Their resistance, durability, toughness, and the traces of corrosion found on them are qualities that truly fascinate me, and are often reflected in my work. I consider jewelry as something intimate, a channel of communication with oneself, and a link between our physical and emotional existence. However, jewelry also operates as a social statement made both by its creator and the person wearing it, as a form of interaction between body and space, individuals and society. Within this state of mind, I create three-dimensional objects that function as an extension of the human body. Jewelry pieces inspired by people for people. And by constantly questioning the nature of existence, as well as that of jewelry, I proceed.
Maria Karystinou
I'm interested in the experiential relation that someone can develop with jewelry, either by wearing it or by creating it. Through the creative process and the processing of each material, I try to first feel the emotions before I convey them to people. My work follows specific concepts and I try to choose the particular materials that symbolize the idea. As a result, I manage to evoke emotions through my work and the messages that it carries. Lately, I have been concerned with the trauma of the soul, as well as how it appears on the body. My research focuses on the performance of these signs and their emergence. I pull stimuli from current affairs and I am inspired by the art of primitive people, myths and allegory, as well as parts of industrial machinery.
Fotini Lyra
The starting point for my work comes from a collective or an experiential stimulus. I use specific materials that are part of the creative process and part of the research I do in order to visualize an idea and to give it substance. I consider the body to be the subject and the medium of an art narration. The body of the one that wears a piece of jewelry and that of the viewer are both emotionally involved in "my little story". And this is what connects them between the past and the present time.
Anastasia Manesi
My source of inspiration comes mainly from nature, the environment that surrounds me, and pretty much everything that is happening around me. I'm experimenting with new materials and techniques to work on my ideas. I really like re-using the same materials and testing their limits. Lately, I have been doing embroidery which has helped me realize my need to create three-dimensional and organic shapes, working in slow, repetitive motions, giving me a more spiritual approach. In my work, the communication between the body that creates and the body that wears jewelry is inextricably linked. I make jewelry that expresses and evokes emotions at the same time.
Dimitra Papamerkouri
Through my work, I explore my connection with space: the physical and the personal; of memory and imagination; the inside and outside. I am fond of soil and territories. I draw maps and topographies. Most of the time, the idea is what determines the materials I use. I am interested in the relationship between the body and the objects. I create tools that become a new space, an extension, an interaction between environment and self. I use repetition, the line, the thread, the drawing... Sewing as a meditative act and as a healing gesture. I am interested in hands and what I can do with them.
Lili Preve
I approach my work through observation and experimentation with the material. The idea is a prerequisite. Knowledge and experience, the goal. Everything we know from the world, material and immaterial, is a result of our personal experiences. All of this translates into inspiration that fuels research and creativity. The body becomes the "viewing angle" of reality or fantasy. Guided by this, I create and complete the idea that is shaped into a piece of jewelry, wearable or not. My intention is to communicate the gestural act of my work so that through the interaction created with the body of the viewer-receiver, emotions, thoughts, and reflections arise.
Eugenia Ferousi
Art jewelry gives me the opportunity to look for answers in my existential and intellectual quest. I try to understand the invisible threads that connect space and time conceptually and causally. I am fascinated because I am challenged to make them visible, precise, specific, tangible in the shape of a piece of jewelry. The metaphysics of love, its infinite emotional manifestations, and its vital energy is my source of inspiration. Each time I approach my projects from a different point of view, aiming to decode it. "The body knows," writes Elytis in Mikros Naftilos. The body is our topos, our personal space. The body experiences, it records, it has memory and it recalls from it, it transforms into movement what it may feel, it reacts, it denotes; on this base, the body is the mold of the piece of jewelry. The selection of the symbolic material used for the creation of an art object makes a past moment or experience tangible. The unconscious is fond of inspiration; each time there is one experience and sentiment that is selected among all to become the story behind a specific piece of jewelry. It tries, and hopefully succeeds, to transform a personal idea into a universal one. The body that wears a piece of jewelry is the setting, the background of the idea that the wearable object presents. This body is a transmitter between the creator and the one who looks at the piece of jewelry. The body of the observer decodes the idea, independently from the fact that it identifies or not with it, it reacts to it. So, the body knows when it creates, when it wears, when it observes, and art jewelry, due to the idea that it conveys, is the common space where they meet.
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