Presented as part of the 3rd Lisbon International Biennial of Contemporary Jewellery, dedicated to the theme “Coexistences”, ECHOES — 14 Perspectives on Humanity and the World brings together fourteen artists in a shared reflection on the human condition and the world we inhabit.
From this encounter emerges Bancada 14, a collective formed by Amélia Marta, Ana Margarida Carvalho, Ana Paula Picoito, Andrea Sepúlveda, Fernando Crêspo, Jorge Dinis, Margarida Carmo Costa, Maria Inês Reis e Silva, Paula Zerbes, Rui Silva, Sofia Matinhos, Sónia Brum, Vanda Lopes and Vivianne Kiritani.
Drawing on distinct backgrounds, artistic languages and perspectives, the fourteen artists offer different interpretations of the transformations, tensions and contradictions shaping the present. ECHOES becomes a space of multiple voices: fourteen independent perspectives that intersect and reverberate, proposing, through contemporary jewellery, different ways of observing, questioning and reflecting on our relationship with others and the world.
Genesis suggests that every beginning carries consequences, and that transformation is the continuous journey between the gene and the self.
Within this perpetual movement, mutations emerge from the reckless exploitation of natural resources, leaving their mark on both humanity and the surrounding world. Climate change is now a direct reflection of these actions and omissions.
Human existence unfolds between dualities, where contrasts drive our capacity to evolve and reinvent ways of coexisting. Between the flow of everyday space-time and the coexistence of opposites, we experience the paradox of technological ubiquity: constant presence and profound isolation. Through chromatic dialogues, colour becomes a language that expresses tensions and affinities, seeking harmony even when we feel like impostors in our own time.
Yet ecology, which reminds us of the interdependence of all forms of life; utopia, which persists in casting light on the dystopian landscape of the present; human relationships, which reveal our ongoing search for meaning in a world where we recognise ourselves through others; and the act of sharing remain essential.
Bancada 14 — Official Instagram
My participation
In ECHOES — 14 Perspectives on Humanity and the World, I presented pieces exploring the relationship between matter, transformation and coexistence, bringing together elements of different origins within a single body.
Stone, wood and metal bring together different timescales and processes: materials formed by nature coexist with others extracted, transformed and manipulated through human action. Through geometric forms, I organise these encounters through overlaps, interlocking elements and balances, creating small structures in which each element inevitably affects the others.
There is tension in these relationships, but also interdependence. No material exists in isolation, nor does it remain unaffected by the presence of the others. Each element influences and is influenced, transforms and is transformed. My pieces thus become small territories of coexistence, reflecting a condition that extends beyond the object: we inhabit a world of interconnected systems, where every action has consequences and every transformation leaves traces.
Between the natural and the constructed, balance and instability, I explore materials that have undergone different timescales and processes of transformation. Reconfigured into new arrangements, they carry traces of both their origins and the interventions that have altered them.
Like an echo, what we do reverberates, transforms and returns, even if in another form.