The 2nd Lisbon Contemporary Jewellery Biennial seeks to reflect on the way in which jewellery expresses and represents politics and power. The specific theme "Political Jewellery. Jewellery of Power” encompasses these two dimensions and the title “Madrugada” is inspired by a famous poem by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen.
The general title of the Biennial is also the title chosen for the exhibition and colloquium, similar to what happened in 2021. With this title “Madrugada”, we wanted to focus on the possibility of utopia, seeking to recover the emotion of the first days of freedom in 1974, but we have not forgotten the harsh reality of the present. We question where utopia, ideology, politics and their perception by artists are expressed today. How do we organize our world, which we know is multipolar and interconnected, but where we also discover new lines of rupture and the end of consensuses that seemed unshakable? The intuition of the end of an era is glaring, but who will have a clear vision of what is being built?
The “Madrugada” exhibition aims to show the vitality of the political expression of contemporary artistic jewellery, through transgenerational, transcultural, trans-species visions, revealing different understandings, in a comprehensive approach to what current jewellery is, thinking of adornment as a political gesture . At the colloquium we will seek to think and debate these and other aspects of the connection between jewellery and politics, power and “policy”, in different contexts and geographies.
Continuing one of the guidelines of the 1st Biennial, a retrospective exhibition of the work of a Portuguese artist will also be presented, in this case, that of Teresa Milheiro, with the suggestive title “1984”, a date that is also the beginning of her career in jewelry.
The exhibitions “Contemporary Tiaras” and “Jewels for Democracy” explore different ways of linking jewellery with power, at the Royal Treasury Museum, showing contemporary tiaras in contrast to the collection of Portuguese crown jewels and honoring women who stood out in the fight for democracy or against dictatorship.
Once again schools are also in the spotlight with the meeting of several European schools at Arco – Center for Art and Visual Communication where students will also exhibit their work. Other exhibitions by students from PIN member schools - António Arroio, Cindor, Algures and Atelier Mourão - take place in various locations in Lisbon, as will exhibitions organized by several artists' collectives as “parallel events”.
International galleries also have their space, in a 3-day Jewellery Room that takes place at the FRESS Museum, in Portas do Sol, by the Castle. The PIN pop-up and the Biennale information point will be in the same location between June 24th and 30th.
