This September, the 3rd Lisbon Contemporary Jewellery Biennial, Coexistences (Coexistências), will take place across several venues, including the 17th-century Convento dos Cardaes in the city’s historic centre. From 25–27 September, A-Galerii will take part in the biennial’s showroom programme there, presenting a selection of contemporary Estonian jewellery supported by the Estonian Ministry of Culture through its Estonian Culture in the World grant programme. An exhibition “At the Beginning of the Future” brings together the work of 12 Estonian jewellery artists and is curated by Sille Luiga. Responding to the biennial’s central theme of coexistence, the display explores how humans, nature and technology might inhabit the future and what new relationships might emerge between them.
“At the Beginning of the Future” approaches jewellery as a means of imagining possible worlds. Abstract, architectural forms mingle with organic ones, creating the foundations for an alternative miniature ecosystem. Together, the works form a kind of speculative landscape in which humans, plants, insects, minerals, technology and artificial intelligence exist in new and as-yet undefined relationships.
Jewellery’s particular quality lies in its proximity to the body. By deliberately shifting and unsettling this intimate scale, the exhibition raises questions that extend beyond the individual object: how might we imagine a world that reaches beyond humanity’s existing ambitions? What kinds of relationships do we want, and with which companions do we wish to share an ever-expanding future?
Here, jewellery becomes a means of exploration, at times almost magical in nature, through which different values, identities and new forms of coexistence can be imagined and tested. Rather than simply reflecting the world as it is, the works propose jewellery as a space for speculating on what the world might become.
“At the Beginning of the Future” brings together artists from different generations whose practices share a desire to approach jewellery as more than a decorative object. Their works are inviting the viewer to pause and imagine a future that is not yet fully formed, but is already beginning to take shape.
Participating artists:
Kaia Ansip (EST/PRT), Valdek Laur (EST), Keiu Koppel (EST), Kadi Kübarsepp (EST), Margit Paulin (EST), Liisbeth Kirss (EST), Katrin Kosenkranius (EST), Raili Vinn (EST), Mari Pärtelpoeg (EST), Elis Liivo (EST), Kati Erme (EST), Tõnis Malkov (EST)