Questioning myself as an artist
The pandemic has struck me strongly in many ways. The most critical one was the question to myself as an artist.
In the time of emergency like this time, I honestly felt that I’m so useless because I cannot save people’s lives like doctors nor I’m not providing essential items for living at all. I have been quite frustrated because I wanted to define my contribution to the society: What kind of role I play in this world?
In my case, an encounter with Haru🐈 changed a lot how I contribute to the society even in a small, tiny scale. (You can read my story with Haru HERE.) I donate a part of sales of my jewellery to animal shelters in Japan and here in Spain but it is a mere indirect way of helping – I was looking for a mission as an artist that I can give something back directly to the society through my jewellery.
As one of the examples to prove the existence of contemporary jewellery in the society during the pandemic was Hand Medal Project organized by Iris Eichenberg and Jimena Ríos, which aims to craft hand-shaped medals for the health service workers to honour them and show our support. According to the official website of the project (handmedalproject.com), more than 3000 jewellers participated in the project and the medals were distributed to more than 300 hospitals around the world, as of October 2021.
Art, as well as jewellery is very secondly – they are not necessary to survive every day but instead, they are something that enrich your life by adding some comfort, stimulation or even provocation for thoughts from the most intimate degree especially in terms of jewellery.
I aim to create something that agitates people to think, in my current project (The World Within) I invite the viewers to contemplate about what life is and the future of humanity with me. You might find my message a bit too complicated and broad, and I'm in search of the most appropriate form to embody it. The collection is in a baby stage👶 still to be developed further ahead.
Creativity of Human being : the future is in our hands🙌
Nowadays people quitted thinking because the Internet can give us any answer. I have to be careful on what I tend to do – just going on the Internet to look for inspirations, references, some artworks…then I stray into the sideways which are nothing to do with what I started with. (Recipes for dinner, some fun images and videos on social medias🤦♀️) It is difficult to control it since the Internet is deeply integrated into our life and it is extremely addictive. Our life is filled with information and communication with no blank space in between. We need distraction to empty our brain and mind…to stop thinking.
If machines and AI are going to be in charge of thinking for human, what is left for us to do?
As I wrote down in the former blog about JOYA (HERE), one of the artists’ roles to play in the society is to bring order in the chaotic world and also to pave our future path towards the perfection with their creativity, technique and magic. The ability to create something is very unique to human, as well as art and even our future including the planet Earth and other creatures that reside on it.
Not only due to Covid (Oh I've had enough of this name in the last two years...) but our society is experiencing exponential transformation at this moment in time. The Internet, technology, science, medicines are moving onto the next level. (Sorry for the people that have been reading my past blog posts because I’m obsessed with these things and talking about it all the time….)
Are we coping with the speed?
If the robots and AI will advance further more are they going to be superior to human?
Will we be controlled by robots??
What we have seen in Sci-Fi movies could be real in the very near future.
Artists with Foresight🔮
Artists have been seeking for a new way of making art – new techniques, new concept, new material etc…all the great artists left their names on the book because they discovered the new way of expression.
Take Pablo Picasso as an example (maybe it’s too cheap? but anyway!). Needless to mention, he is well known for one of the originators of Cubism, which focused on simplifying the shape of subject and started ditching the concept of space and depth – the figures in the paintings are decoded and flattened with less colours. It just reminds me of the commercial logos, for example Windows, Apple and application icons. Picasso already done what we are experiencing now in our familiar environment. Furthermore, Cubism is a way of depicting the subject matter not only from a single point of view but multiple angles and aspects. That is a concept of four-dimensional space (!!) which we are still seeking to prove and experience.
(He contributed much more of what I mention above, but I just stop here for now.)
Countless artists have been trying to bring something new to this world. What could it be for the present time? Does such a thing exist?
Recent discovery for us is NFT art.
From the moment of Dada, specifically readymade art, artists started to separating the object itself and definition of it. The meaning is forced to detach from the object itself and the viewers to give a different meaning and value, or it even suggested that the act of creating something from scratch was meaningless, which simply led him utilize readymade objects. Rather he put emphasis on the act of the artists to choose the object, the free will. This was when we realised the value of the non-physical matter in art, and I believe NFT art is the extreme version of it – we are giving more importance to the concept/ideas/thoughts than physical art work. It might be just a trend but it hugely interests me, because this movement was not brought to us by an artist but the technology. So many innovations and transformation will be introduced through technology not only in art field and I’m quite thrilled to see it and also to embrace them in my artistic carrier.
I want you ☝️ to join me on the journey!
Since I’m not as magnificent as Picasso nor Duchamp, I need far more experience, knowledge and learning for the future telling of contemporary jewellery. I am eager to share what I have with everybody to push the boundary forward (you know, sometimes I feel like contemporary jewellery is a very closed community…), and most importantly, I will very much appreciate if you could join me on the journey to explore and unroll the future of contemporary jewellery by sharing your view and ideas! (I actually have a plan under development for that but it needs your help! Stay tuned!!😉)