Identity
26th LEGNICA INTERNATIONAL JEWELLERY COMPETITION “IDENTITY”
ABOUT THE COMPETITION:
The Legnica International Jewellery Competition is the main event of the Legnica Jewellery Festival SILVER, organized by the Gallery of Art since 1979. The competition has opened character and is addressed to all artists, who have a task to submit works which are characterized by an original creative idea and high artistic and technical level. Idea, worth and sense of the artistic statement are prefered. The submitted works are qualified by an international jury. This year theme of the competition is TOŻSAMOŚĆ. The competition is organized under the patronage of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage.
IDEA:
References to important phenomena that shape the present are a lasting tradition of Legnica Jewellery Festival SILVER. Proposing topics for future competitions we have been trying to follow current civilisational changes and thus inspire artist-goldsmiths, designers and makers of unique jewellery to overpass the schemes and search for individual interpretations.
As it happens, recently, there has not probably been an issue that would not be politically marked – and usually in a negative context. Social processes and their rapid re-evaluations that we are witnessing are described in a language of extreme emotions and not of facts; and ‘post-truth’ becomes the word of the year. As a result existing criteria for ordering the individual / community relation more and more often force us to make world view declarations. At the same time the very identity of an individual acquires an almost exclusively virtual quality and becomes the subject of self-creation, manipulation and even identity theft.
Designer jewellery, that has always been treated as a personal amulet, a symbol, a determinant of individual identity, today is subject to the same mechanisms of ruthless marketing as any product, service, emotion or experience. Therefore new questions arise with respect to the item / user relation both in the real and virtual context so ruthlessly shaped by the economy of profit.
Are material amulets still needed to manifest our identity?
Have former functions of jewellery been indivertibly taken over by electronic accessories?
Will the personal item made of precious materials get indivertibly replaced by the Big Data
algorithm, which is able to make our personality profile on the basis of just 50 traces that we
unwittingly leave on the Internet?
Sławomir Fijałkowski
JURY OF THE COMPETITION:
Doris Maninger - Austrian artist – goldsmith, currently living and working in Florence, Italy. Founder and director of Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School in Florence.
Kim Buck – Danish artist, goldsmith, graduate of Danish Higher School of Jewelry, 1983-85. Visiting lecturer at: Högskolan för Design och Konsthantverk, Göteborgs University, 1999-2001, Guest Professor - Konstfack Stockholm, 2004.
Sławomir Fijałkowski – Professor at the Department of Architecture and Design of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, leads the workshop of Experimental Design, entrant of several exhibitions of jewelry and design in Poland and abroad.
Sophie Hanagarth – artist and goldsmith, lecturer in Higher School of Art in Strasbourg (France).
Arek Wolski – Polish designer, graduate of University of Gdańsk, member of the SIX Group. Entrant of many exhibitions around the world, and also an author of individual exhibitions in Poland and abroad, laureate of prestigious awards.
From among 603 works submitted by 307 artists from 41 countries, to the exhibition qualified works of 47 artists, mainly from Europe but also from China, Iran, Israel, Turkey, South Korea, Russia.