The jewel and the experience of the skin: Maria Ignacia Walker
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An all-round artist, Maria Ignacia Walker expresses herself with her body and her skin.
Her work tells the living experience, in organic matter.
There are some factors in particular that haunt her, such as the transformation of the body, the skin, the loss of hair and everything that makes the existence a performative and creative act of continuous change writes Ilaria Ruggiero.
Starting from her earliest collections, she explores the body as a door to transcendence, understood as another dimension of existence, but at the same time concrete, sensitive, sensual, touching, present.
The skin represents that threshold, a natural and neutral boundary, where everything happens, changes and returns.
Ceremonies and rituals, both ancient and archaic, mythological aesthetics return in her creations, but always through a contemporary language, a new and renewed vision.
Her jewels can always be appreciated under different aspects, and many levels.
The colours, for example, always refer to the tone of the flesh; to the touch, they remind to the softness and plasticity of the resins; the forms recall mythological, divine and transcendent objects and symbols.
In her latest collection Trawa, woven from resin cells and silver dust, inspired by the ancient Mapuche population, jewels take on elegant feminine and maternal forms, recalling the forces of nature, life, and the gifts inherent in the body.
They behave like a second skin, which dialogues in harmony and mixes with the body, in a specific dynamic of widening one's limits.
The pure organic character characterizes the materiality of her works, no geometry or constriction, no pre-established form, only dynamism and flexibility characterize her style so elusive, elegant and alive.
Her work is now on view at Platina gallery together with wearable objects and jewellery by Peter De Wit and Margareth Sandstrom as a result of the PLATINA exhibition prize awarded at the Benaki Museum during the Athens Jewelery Week 2018.
María Ignacia Walker obtained her first degree in Art Direction at Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile, 2007. In October 2015 she graduated with an MFA in Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School, Florence, where she is based and works as independent artist. In 2018 she was welcomed into Khio, Oslo National Academy of Art, Norway for a special artist in residency programme While working on her personal projects, Maria likes to share her knowledge by giving lectures and workshops. She has taught in Florence, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Santiago de Chile.
Image Credits
Photographs Lucy Plato Clark also for Trascenderion series
01 - 02
CELLS, 2017
Materials resin / nylon
Photographs Sejla Ljudovic
03 – 04 – 05 - 06
Flor de Piel, 2017
Materials resin / nylon
Photographs Lucy Plato Clark
Collaboration performance artist Francesca Valeri
07
Trascendieron, 2015
Materials Porcelain / Horsehair / Resin / Gold thread / Gold
Photographs Marcos Bucco / Silvano Di Geronimo / Aleksandra Trajkovic
About the Contributing Writer
Ilaria Ruggiero is a cultural manager and curator working in the field of contemporary art. She is the founder of Adornment - Curating Contemporary Art Jewelry, a curatorial integrated project dedicated to contemporary art jewelry. It aims to develop the knowledge and consciousness of contemporary jewelry as artistic discipline and as ground search for technique, aesthetics, and philosophy.
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