Diplopia: MFA Thesis - Metals

Abstract

Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it is one of them. It is caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But because it sees and moves itself, it holds things in a circle around itself. (― Maurice Merleau-Ponty) Diplopia refers to the symptom of seeing two images instead of one. In my work, I manipulate aspects of physical appearance. Using the language of jewelry, I explore optics and illusion. Jewelry as a traditional means of adornment is a part of our appearance, and therefore a medium to explore personal identity. Jewelry and our skin - both can be seen as a layer that shape our appearance. I use jewelry to create a symbiotic relationship between the body and its environment, using light projection or mirroring to manipulate the boundary between the two. As Damian Skinner asserts in his book Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective, “The space of the body, and its variability and particularity as a space to show an object, complicates perception, and simultaneously activates the object in a transformative way.” Therefore my goal is to create jewelry that not only stands alone as an object but obtains its function when worn.