Roberta Bernabei: Re-Conceptualizing [Dis]obedient Jewellery

The Italian-British editor of the Journal of Jewelry Analysis reframes jewellery as (dis)obedient bodymatter—an lively agent somewhat than a passively worn object.

Bernabei gave this presentation as a part of the 2026 “AJF Speaker Sequence: Jewellery that Makes You Suppose,” which featured 16 talks over 5 days. Many of the collection befell within the sales space AJF shared with Arnoldsche Artwork Publishers on the commerce honest.

SLIDE 1
Good afternoon to everybody.
I want to thank those that invited me and the viewers who’s right here in the present day. I additionally want to thank all of the jewelry items current right here, I hope you’ll take pleasure in my discuss.
Slide: My presentation is titled Re-Conceptualising [Dis]obedient Jewelry: Materials Company and the Disruption of Normative Expectations. The title is emblematic; it’s the essence, the concise abstract of the content material of this presentation. The title is the start, and so I’ll begin exactly from right here.

SLIDE 2
The important thing phrase of this whole presentation is [Dis]obedient.
This adjective — written with brackets — is a stylistic and conceptual alternative typically utilized in crucial or inventive writing to counsel each obedience and disobedience on the similar time. I’ve intentionally chosen to jot down it on this option to encourage crucial considering.
Conceptually, it features as a type of strategic fragmentation: it highlights each the prefix dis- and the foundation obedient, drawing consideration to their coexistence. It creates a semantic pressure by visually holding collectively two contrasting concepts — obedience and disobedience — in a single phrase. This alternative stems from a want to disrupt the thought of jewelry as a passive object.
One other key time period I’ll use often throughout this presentation is the company of objects.
BUT- What’s the company of an object? To reply this, I’ll discuss with the primary definition proposed by Alfred Gell in his guide Artwork and Company (1998). In line with Gell, objects and artefacts will be thought-about social brokers, not as a result of they possess intentions or consciousness, however as a result of they:
• Trigger results within the social world
• Affect ideas, feelings, and actions
• Mediate relationships between individuals
Instance- I may not use- That is about impact in a causal sense. Instance:
A marriage ring causes recognition of marital standing → that modifications habits. For Gell, company doesn’t require intention. Company is the capability to supply results inside a community of social relations

SLIDE 3
This presentation goals to re-conceptualise the [dis]obedient jewellery that challenges anthropocentric assumptions positioning jewelry as an object designed to serve human goals. Conventional frameworks presume that jewellery fulfils predetermined features: beautifying, signifying id, or speaking social worth, thereby stabilising it inside predictable modes of damage and interpretation. Such views reinforce a mannequin by which jewelry stays subordinate to human intention, activated solely by means of the company of makers, wearers, viewers and /or curators. In different phrases, the which means is activated / created or activated by human brokers:
• Makers → by means of design choices, supplies, idea.
• Wearers → by means of how they put on and embody it.
• Viewers → by means of interpretation.
• Curators → by means of framing, show, context

SLIDE 4
Conventional frameworks presume that jewellery fulfils predetermined features: beautifying, signifying id, or speaking social worth, thereby stabilising it inside predictable modes of damage and interpretation.

Jewellery with particular symbolic meanings in our society.
Mayoral Chains: These are elaborate ceremonial chains worn by the mayors of many cities and cities, particularly in the UK, symbolizing their authority and tasks

SLIDE 5
Allow us to think about the crown: it’s maybe essentially the most well-known symbolic jewel representing energy. Its operate is to indicate the status and authority of the wearer. But additionally it is probably the most uncomfortable items of jewelry; when carrying a crown, one can’t transfer as freely as an abnormal particular person. Paradoxically, it’s an “unwearable” piece of jewelry, but nobody would argue that it isn’t jewelry. I argue that that is an instance of ingenious opposition: the thing asserts its autonomy by means of behaviours that exceed and even contradict human expectations of wearability and luxury.

Drawing on object-oriented ontology (Harman), and the idea of ‘cultural objects as agentic (Mc Donnell), it’s argued as a substitute that jewelry can enact types of ingenious opposition, asserting its autonomy by means of behaviours that exceed or contradict human expectations.

SLIDE 6
Right here we see the work by Ted Noten, titled Tiara for Máxima (2002). This piece affords a refined and gently subversive reinterpretation of the normal operate of the crown.
On this work, the crown takes the type of a helmet, with the tiara form minimize out from it. The motion is witty and playful, but concurrently subversive. Quite than crowning the top — elevating it symbolically — the thing protects it. It features extra as armour than as decoration. On this method, the work challenges the expectation that energy should be displayed and valuable materials should be used. Not like the normal crown mentioned earlier than, imposing and restrictive, this piece stays absolutely wearable whereas quietly destabilising the symbolism it invokes.

SLIDE 7
On this slide I current photographs of jewelry items by which disruption happens by means of a change of operate. These objects now not carry out as anticipated: the floor has tarnished, a pin has damaged, or a structural ingredient has shifted. Their materials company persists — they proceed to behave and to have an effect on — but from a human perspective they seem disobedient, as they now not conform to our expectations of sturdiness, stability, or correct put on.
Moreover, inside a more-than-human perspective, disobedience emerges when jewelry engages in materials actions that disrupt the normative choreography of damage: migrating unexpectedly on the physique, tarnishing or remodeling in opposition to curatorial intention, fracturing or deforming past the maker’s management, or imposing an intrusive bodily presence by means of weight, motion, or instability. These gestures are interpreted not as failures however as proof of the thing’s personal capacities, rhythms, and can.

Different examples: migrating- transferring … behaving in a method that’s annoying …for instance the necklace strikes when you don’t want her to be transferring…) conditions the place the jewel -A. Slips, slides, rotates, or falls, B. Strikes due to gravity, sweat, warmth, or physique movement; C. Can’t be absolutely managed by the wearer, D. Creates sudden sensations or visibility.

SLIDE 8
This dynamic will be understood by means of 2 preliminary conceptual lenses:
Mutual affect– The jewellery and the human exist in mutual affect, but unequally. Whereas people collaborate with its existence, the jewellery carries ahead its personal trajectory, persisting even when discarded or uncherished.
Mutual-Evolving Company – Each human and jewellery form/have an effect on one another over time. The jewellery transforms by means of put on, publicity, and interplay, whereas people are influenced by its presence, its magnificence, its communicative energy and typically its unpredictability.

SLIDE 9
Disruption of Normative Expectations

From this level, I’ll transfer rapidly by means of ten examples of inventive methods adopted by artwork jewellers to disrupt normative conventions and expectations.
Methods of [Dis]obedient Jewelry — I’ve grouped them into two essential classes:
1. Ambush Aesthetics (normality as disguise)
These are works that seem standard at first look however subtly undermine expectation. An instance is the necklace by Otto Künzli, which conceals its conceptual provocation beneath an apparently acquainted type.
2. Seen Revolt (clear, manifest dissent)
These are works by which disruption is express and instantly perceptible — for instance, interventions equivalent to a perforated black diamond, the place the gesture of dissent is brazenly declared.
Earlier than continuing, I want to make clear an necessary level: the maker doesn’t start or act alone. My place is that we have to reframe authorship and think about the maker as co-working with the thing and with every thing that surrounds it.
The item is formed by means of a relational course of that features materials properties, environmental situations, spatial contexts, and temporal dimensions. On this sense, the maker collaborates not solely with matter, but in addition with house and time.

SLIDE 10
Otto Kuenzli necklace. That is an instance the place the artist has conceived with the complicity of the reminiscences imbued within the weddings rings a series that’s unwearable due to the insufferable reminiscences. Wedding ceremony rings are conventionally symbols of union, continuity, and love. They’re meant to be worn every day, near the physique, as indicators of dedication and social recognition. On this work, nonetheless, those self same rings — charged with private histories — are reworked into a series whose bodily and emotional weight prevents it from being worn. The piece subverts the norm in two methods. First, it challenges the expectation that jewelry should be wearable. Second, it disrupts the cultural narrative of the marriage ring as a purely optimistic image. As a substitute of celebrating permanence and concord, the work acknowledges rupture, loss, or trauma.
Right here, reminiscence turns into materials. The emotional residue embedded within the rings acquires company: it determines the type of the thing and in the end makes it resistant to make use of. In doing so, the artist as soon as once more destabilises the standard understanding of jewelry as ornamental, compliant, and socially affirming, revealing as a substitute its capability to hold discomfort, pressure, and dissent.
Final level is that the visible high quality is a form of ambush.

SLIDE 11
Gijs Bakker, brooch, Cool Inexperienced, collection: REAL, 2004 You’ll be able to argue that this work transforms jewellery from: worth perspective. As Liesbeth den Besten mentioned in her 2011 guide, ‘Pretend and actual stones mix in a unity of phantasm’

SLIDE 12
Robert Smit, Neck decoration, gold 900/000, portray on gold!!!

SLIDE 13
Jan Yager’s work proposes a form of Ambush Aesthetic (normality as disguise)
The collar seems standard at first inspection however the expectation is subverted if you realise that the fabric is :crack vials, crack caps, syringes, solid silver crack caps.
Jan Yager’s work proposes a type of Ambush Aesthetic. At first, the collar seems standard. Nevertheless, this expectation is abruptly subverted when one realises that the supplies encompass crack vials, crack caps, syringes, and solid silver crack caps. What initially reads as decoration is revealed to be composed of objects related to habit, marginalisation, and oppression. The aesthetic familiarity features as a entice. Furthermore, the viewer is sort of instantly discouraged from imagining the piece as wearable. The considered putting such supplies near the physique produces discomfort. It turns into, conceptually and emotionally, an “insufferable” necklace — notably within the context of social oppression and the histories embedded in these supplies.
On this method, the work exemplifies the ambush technique: it disguises itself as standard jewelry, solely to confront the viewer with the burden of its social and political implications.

SLIDE 14
Karl Fritsch, ring, 2007, oxidised gold, black diamond with gap. A fantastic shock for individuals who would count on perfection type a valuable faceted stone!

SLIDE 15
Bernard Schobinger, necklace, glass, wire, 1988, Damaged bottlenecks which can be visibly harmful to be worn

SLIDE 16
This slide and the subsequent one are devoted to an emblematic instance MAPTA, 9 March Mission.
The MAPTA exhibition offered works that subverted conventional expectations of knickknack, difficult established notions of decoration, worth, and propriety. Consequently, the exhibition was deemed unsuitable for minors and was in the end banned. Notably, the makers themselves didn’t absolutely anticipate the depth of the general public and institutional response. On this case, the meanings generated by the artifacts exceeded the intentions of their creators.

SLIDE 17
My work- censor feminine voices! This consequence illustrates how objects can function past authorial management. As argued by Graham Harman, objects usually are not reducible to human intention; they enter into relations with different objects, establishments, and discourses, producing results that surpass their preliminary conceptual framing. The exhibition demonstrates how jewellery, as soon as positioned inside a broader social community, can train pressure — upsetting reactions, controversy, and in the end censorship. The banning itself turns into proof of the objects’ capability to behave inside a discipline of relations, producing penalties that neither the makers nor the establishment absolutely predicted.

SLIDE 18
Now I’ll present 4 photographs on – Decentering the Human: Jewellery from a Put up-Anthropocentric Perspective.
As artefacts relate to different artefacts (Graham Harman’s idea), if we reframe or disrupt the conference that jewellery depends of a human physique, we reframe it inside a Put up-Anthropocentric Place or more-than human place. Graham says that objects work together past human mediation. In relation to this precept, if we take a look at this drawing you see a big ring, with a human physique positioned inside its setting. The concept subverts the notion fully, and jewellery isn’t worn by people however the reverse. It presents a subverted world: an outsized ring by which the physique itself turns into the stone.
By remodeling the physique into the “stone,” the work questions who or what’s being displayed, possessed, or valued. Is the jewel serving the physique, or is the physique serving the jewel? The picture destabilises standard expectations of jewelry as an adjunct and as a substitute suggests that jewelry can construction, include, and even management the physique.
The ring is now not a silent object; it turns into an lively pressure that frames the human determine. On this sense, the drawing visually embodies the idea of [Dis]obedient jewelry: an object that refuses passivity and as a substitute asserts its presence inside social and bodily relations.

SLIDE 19
Obedient Jewellery: Solid for City panorama, Not People, work by Liesbet Bussche,
Les Bijoux Urbains. Gigantic necklace

SLIDES 20 AND 21
Obedient Jewellery: Solid for Nature, Not People
Jewelry for nature, right here the idea is prolonged with an ecological method. This can be a piece of labor by Melinda Younger,

SLIDE 22
In conclusion…
By foregrounding jewelry’s capability to withstand its anticipated service position, ingenious opposition reframes the thing as an lively participant in lived expertise somewhat than a passive adornment. [Dis]obedient jewelry unsettles standard boundaries between compliance and resistance, instrument and companion, craft and company. It invitations another analytic orientation by which jewelry is examined not merely by way of what it does for us however by way of what it does with and to us.
This framework expands up to date jewelry research by demonstrating how dis OR obedience arises by means of materials indeterminacy, nonhuman company, and the bounds of human management—in the end repositioning jewelry as an autonomous, typically unruly, co constitutive presence inside on a regular basis life.

To conclude, I’d like to depart you with a query to ponder:
How does Jewellery immediately or not directly have an effect on the best way we act, particularly after we allow them to affect us?

The opinions said right here don’t essentially specific these of AJF.

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