29. Legnica International Jewellery Competition STILL HUMAN?

The Gallery of Art in Legnica, pl. Katedralny 1

4 May – 31 July, 2021 

Opening hours:

Tuesday - Sunday: 12:00 - 6:00 p.m.

ABOUT THE COMPETITION:
The cyclical International Jewellery Competition is the leading event of Legnica SILVER Festival, organised by the Gallery of Art in Legnica since 1979. The competition is of a purely artistic nature, favouring the artist's idea and statement on a given theme. The interpretation of the theme and the artistic value of the statement are the basic criteria for qualifying works for the exhibition. The theme of the 29th edition of the competition was: Still Human? Out of 357 works submitted by 186 artists from 35 countries, the jury selected 44 artists for the exhibition.

IDEA:

A holographic Whitney Houston is just setting off on a European tour, and she is not the first pop idol resurrected to perform “live” again... You can plan a holiday in space because in 2027 a hotel on orbit will be available for an exorbitant price of nearly $ 800,000 per day!

A brave new world? Is it really for us?

We, humans, are drowning in depression - in ten years’ time depression will be the most common disease of mankind, although even today only 5% of the population are considered thoroughly healthy. Obesity kills three times as many people as famine, while death from exhaustion happens every second in the world, with half the food produced globally being wasted. In our civilized world, wars, attacks, assaults and massacres still pay off, and two out of five murdered women in the world are killed at home by their partner.

“Today – as the philosopher writes ominously – we can only fear ourselves”¹.

Even theocentrism and the Copernican Revolution have not cured us from selfishness, nor have they taught us humility in the face of nature’s greatness and the power of its elements. Living in a post-human reality shared with humanoid mutants, clones, cyborgs and hybrids, we still refuse to accept the crisis of anthropocentrism.

In an era when machines are smarter than people and it is with them that we spend most of the day, when we irreversibly overgrow with plastic (it is deposited in our bodies and at the bottom of the oceans), when we are able to examine, produce and sell everything, we continue to argue about the humanity of the zygote, the primitive tribes, the coloured races, or finally the urban existence that isolates us from nature and the natural rhythm of day and night, replacing the bonds of neighbourhood with media-communities. We still need bodies, but aesthetic medicine and medical nanotechnologies, body art with Orlan and Stelarc at the forefront, body hacking and virtual reality evidence the fact that we are just crossing this immemorial border. We haven’t got rid of the reptile’s brain, but we have gained a „smartphone thumb”, we haven’t freed ourselves from animal instincts, but we get cybersex and adrenaline... in the cinema chair.

Would the first cloned sheep Dolly or Alba (the fluorescent rabbit by Eduardo Kac) forgive us? And the lions, elephants and whales killed mindlessly on a whim, or dolphins, whom we defined as non-human persons in 2013, but still imprison, abuse and kill? Choosing the concrete jungle, the virtual world, swallowing synthetic dietary supplements, drinking nutritional drinks - are we as human as our ancestors? Turning away from other people and towards ourselves in a selfie gesture – are we still human? Have we conquered the world or have we destroyed it?

Behind all this there are human beings... But are they still human?

Justyna Teodorczyk, 2020

1) Jolanta Brach-Czaina, Błony umysłu, Warsaw, Sic! Publishing House, 2003, p. 123.

JURY OF THE COMPETITION:

Caroline Broadhead – visual artist and designer of utility objects, currently Professor Emerita at BA Jewellery Design, Central Saint Martins, London (UK). Winner of many awards and prizes, including: Jerwood Prize for Applied Arts: Textiles in 1997, Textiles International Open in 2004 and The Goldsmiths Craft & Design Council Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.

Maria Magdalena Kwiatkiewicz – co-founder and co-owner of the YES Jewellery company, founder of the YES Gallery presenting the artistic activities of independent Polish designers and jewellery-makers. In 2019 she published the book Artist Jewellers. Conversations About Polish Jewellery. She owns the largest private collection of contemporary Polish jewellery.

Georg Dobler – artist-goldsmith, from 2002 to 2019 professor at the HAWK School of Applied Arts and Sciences in Hildesheim, Germany, where he has been holding the honorary position of Professor Erimitus since 2019. He began his goldsmithing education at the Berufsfachschule für Goldschmiedekunst, then, together with the goldsmith Winfried Krüger, founded a contemporary jewellery studio.

Darijus Gerlikas – artist-goldsmith, graduate of the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts (Lithuania). Co-founder and member of the Vilnius Association of Arts and Crafts and member of the Lithuanian Association of Artists. Founder and owner of VILNENSIS gallery. Founder and director of VILNENSIS Jewellery School, associate professor at the Faculty of Design, Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts.

Sławomir Fijałkowski – designer of utility objects, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk (Experimental Design Studio), curator of Amberif - the Amber and Jewellery Fair, graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, Jewellery Design and postgraduate studies at the Hochschule für künstlerische und industrielle Gestaltung in Linz, Austria.

PARTICIPANTS OF THE EXHIBITION:
Silvia Bellia (Italy), Rita Besnyői (Hungary), Annarita Bianco (Italy), Alexander Blank (Germany), Andrzej Boss (Poland), Laurent Brune (France), Renata Campisani (Italy), Carla Castiajo (Portugal), Anna and Witold Chudzik (Poland), Jacek Franasik (Poland), Mariana Bilbao Gonzalez-Dueñas (Spain), Julia Groos (Germany), Marta Havličková (Czech Republic), Esther Heite (Germany), Tuija Hietanen (Finland), Romualdas Inčirauskas (Lithuania) , Tadeusz Jaśkowiak (Poland), Rasa Jundulaité - Lithuania), Małgorzata Kalińska (Poland), Dovillé Kazakevičiené (Lithuania), Izabela Kędzior (Poland), Ji Young Kim (Republic of Korea), Renata Korpas-Sutowicz (Poland), Zofia and Witold Kozubscy (Poland), Felieke van der Leest (Netherlands), Peter Machata (Slovakia), Dot Melanin (Germany), Wu Meng-Ju (Taiwan), Mireia Calaf Mensa (Spain), Michalina Owczarek-Siwak (Poland), Sham Patwardhan -Joshi (Germany), Ruudt Peters (Netherlands), Kirsten Plank (Germany), Hana Polivková (Czech Republic), Paulius Rukas (Lithuania), Tieke Scheerlinck (Belgium), Kristýna Španihelová (Czech Republic), Sława Tchórzewska (Poland), Miroslava Veselá (Czech Republic), Heike Walk (Germany), Karol Weisslechner (Slovakia), Liu Yiqing (China), Olga Zielińska (Poland), Katarzyna Żuczkowska (Poland)

ABOUT THE FESTIVAL:
Legnica SILVER Festival is the most important event periodically organized by the Gallery of Art in Legnica. Every year, as part of it, over a dozen solo and collective exhibitions are presented, including: the International Jewellery Competition, About the Authors (a series of presentations of outstanding individualities of Polish and international goldsmithing), Silver Schools (a series of exhibitions showing the artistic achievements of European goldsmith and design schools, their professors, graduates and students), Debuts (a series promoting young Polish artists who are just entering the Polish and European goldsmithing scene. For many years now, the Festival has also included a series of popular-science seminars devoted to the latest art, goldsmithing and design entitled the Boundaries of Global Art as well as happenings and concerts. Every year the event is held under the patronage of the Minister of Culture, National Heritage and Sport, the Marshal of the Lower Silesian Voivodeship and the Mayor of the City of Legnica.

WINNERS OF THE COMPETITION:

Examples of other works qualified for the exhibition:

Rasa Jundulaité – Lithuania

I’m not a robot  pendant, wood, leather, silver, own technique, 25 x 25 x 70 mm, 33 g, 2018

Dovilé Kazakevičiené – Lithuania

Touch my soul and let me grow as a person  object, silver and textiles, 105 x 80 mm, 64 g, 2019

Izabela Kędzior – Poland

A Human  set of brooches, silver, wood, steel, own technique, 80 x 160 x 15 mm, 96 g, 2020

Renata Korpas-Sutowicz – Poland

Mirror  object, glass, silver, 270 x 140 mm, 350 g, 2020

Sham Patwardhan–Joshi – Germany

With glasses one changes their own personality?  bracelet, wood, paper, enamel paint, aluminium,

magnets, Needle-painted dots, 150 x 130 x 40 mm, 300 g, 2018

Paulius Rukas –  Lithuania
Moses’s notebook  object, lead, gold, inlay, own technique, 68 x 44 x 12 mm, 350 g, 2020

Sława Tchórzewska – Poland

Here is a Human  brooch, own technique, nonwoven, resin, photo, velvet, Ř 100 mm, 2020

Karol Weisslechner –  Slovakia / Germany

Untitled  brooch, silver, soap, hair, gold leaf, glass, 69 x 65 x 10 mm, 32 g, 2016