Pressures of the Self – Artwork Jewellery Discussion board

1984
Could 20–July 27, 2024
Zé dos Bois, Lisbon, Portugal

This summer season, the second Lisbon Worldwide Biennial of Up to date Jewelry celebrated 50 years of democracy in Portugal, specializing in freedom, energy, and democracy. The official program offered Teresa Milheiro’s solo present, 1984, on the Zé dos Bois (ZDB) gallery. This exhibition served as a rise up, reflecting on how people are defiant of societal pressures.

Milheiro, like many Portuguese jewellery artists, attended Ar.co and taught there. She’s the co-founder of ZDB gallery and ran her personal gallery, Articula. Her works have a robust political dimension and are sometimes society-critical. She has been an anarchist (she is unsure whether or not she nonetheless is) and this rise up and freedom are evident in her works. The exhibition 1984 offered new works along with works from her 40-year profession, all politically charged.

I used to be struck by the feelings 1984 evoked. 4 months later, what I bear in mind most is the sensation I bought: uneasy and shaky. I bear in mind a mixture of pleasure and disturbance. I used to be impressed with the present’s scale and shocked by among the supplies. The darkish and mysterious gallery house, with its arched ceiling, was spectacular. The massive picket doorways have been open to the streets, letting in the one mild within the entrance room. The exhibition unfold throughout 4 ground-floor gallery rooms, the primary three taking guests deeper into the constructing. The dimly lit, cave-like gallery solid a shadowy glow over Milheiro’s somber works telling tales of oppression.

Milheiro’s work explores the stress between the person and the communal self. Whereas expressing individuality is vital, group stress could make individuals conform. The place is the road between the societal creature and the person one? What if somebody resists? Is there punishment? Milheiro performs these tensions out on the physique.

In capitalism, the physique is a canvas for particular person expression. Additionally it is a spot the place societal norms and accepted methods of being are offered. Milheiro’s necklace Desperately in search of a wrinkle highlights the obsession with youth and the vulnerability of growing older. Society pressures us to look younger and ideal. Abandoning that customary is a daring assertion. I recall the scorn I confronted for carrying soiled denims on the streets of Tallinn. I couldn’t endure it for greater than a day. I used to be shamed into dressing “correctly.”

The physique doesn’t like being judged. Milheiro’s creations present the physique’s vulnerability whereas concurrently providing it safety and putting it beneath menace. A few of her works would possibly damage.

Anti-bite fingerstalls, from 1989, cease anxious people from biting their nails. The sharp claws shield the nails from the tooth. Milheiro additionally performs with the symbolism of physique components. The cut-out tongue symbolizes censorship. The tied eyeballs in The eyes are ineffective when the thoughts is blind symbolize not eager to suppose nor see. The lined noses symbolize illness and wonder requirements. “Artwork doesn’t must be lovely however ought to provoke thought,” states Milheiro.

She thinks of political issues in her life and work. Her work One Method System critiques the dearth of acceptance for nuances. It exhibits a lacking place for these undefined by regulatory requirements. Individuals who don’t match into classes trigger confusion and are misplaced. “You both must be this or that, left or proper, like there isn’t a in between,” says Milheiro. The work is fabricated from two mirrors with a needle pointing to the brow. The 2 mirrors act as two eye patches to look in a single path: on the needle. The work warns the person to not err from the one and solely approach. “The official narrative is that there’s just one approach,” says Milheiro. To search out one other approach, you want braveness.

Milheiro’s works have two sides. On the one facet there’s the oppressive jewellery representing society. On the opposite facet there’s jewellery representing a free particular person.

The Strain collection, made in 2023, exhibits the facility of breaking free from societal constraints. The collars and bracelets discover particular person power. Visually, they resemble the collars and cuffs that slaves have been compelled to put on. “They’re fabricated from glass, giving the wearer the facility to interrupt them,” Milheiro says. The neckpiece breaks when hooked up too tightly. It exhibits how a lot stress issues/beings can take earlier than they break or break away. Working with glass taught Milheiro self-acceptance.

“Glass is a fragile materials that must be dealt with with care; if not, it breaks and is misplaced,” she says. “I’m beginning to settle for my fragility; for years I didn’t. I needed to be robust and unbreakable. I needed to faux I used to be indestructible,” she continues. Working with glass has taught her concerning the caring nature of relationships. “Glass needs to be taken care of, similar to the relations between individuals and ourselves, in any other case they will break,” Milheiro says.

She began exploring fragility in 2019 when she had a present with Leonor Hipolito referred to as The Energy of Fragility. There she checked out fragility by the lens of the historical past of psychological sickness. She exhibited lobotomy and gynecology instruments.

Egas Moniz, the inventor of the lobotomy, was from Portugal. Milheiro’s analysis concluded that 85% of lobotomy sufferers have been ladies. After the process, they lived in an apathetic zombie-like state. The feminine physique has been a sufferer of monstrous energy for hundreds of years. It is a supply of nightmares. But Milheiro just isn’t afraid to roam there and present her discoveries.

The exhibition’s climax was the dimly lit room on the finish, that includes the identical lobotomy instruments. It was my favourite half as a result of it felt like coming into a darkish bunker. Milheiro supposed it as one, the place physique experiments occurred. Historic materials from docs’ cupboards adorned the partitions. The glass bracelets from the Strain collection hung brightly in the dead of night, confined house. A suitcase full of unsettling gear freaked me out however I stored wanting. A neurologist’s grandson offered Milheiro with zinc sheets, brains engraved on them. They have been used for medical books. She used them for wall installations.

The sunshine targeted solely on the works. The arched ceilings evoked an underground jail. That room jogged my memory of a former secret KGB facility in Tartu, close to my great-grandmother’s dwelling, in an ordinary-looking condo constructing’s basement. 1984 was a sobering reminder that these sorts of “correctional” facilities haven’t vanished from this earth.

Milheiro’s commentary on the human tendency to conform and give up to societal conformity resonated with me. Self-knowledge is a tough path. It usually includes shaming others for not becoming in. Folks will go to nice lengths to be beloved and accepted. Who dares to stroll their very own approach, when even soiled denims could cause scorn? To face alone and face the stress of not being favored takes actual braveness. “Braveness is way wanted in immediately’s world and within the artwork world,” says Milheiro.

1984 demonstrated Milheiro’s braveness and creative vigor. She appeared to say she’s reached particular person freedom and isn’t complying to society’s model of normality. But her voice contributes to society. She is talking up and talking her thoughts. I wish to see how she would specific the state of freedom that lies past breaking free from social constraints. Till now she has been specializing in realism, however what would her hope appear like?

Milheiro is a political artist, and her present fitted this yr’s Lisbon jewellery biennial’s theme of political jewellery. Her 1984 was a rebellious shout, a provocation to suppose. It was a name for misfits to maintain misfitting.

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