Tracing Memory: Jewellery by Raquel Bessudo

Raquel Bessudo is a Jewellery artist based in Mexico City, she designs and composes creations through the use of different materials and elements, such as printed images, pieces of fabric, metal, iron, all organized into compositions with a flavour both naive and delicate.

They are like pieces of memory that are sewn and linked together, to enact these memories and bring them back to life. Raquel interprets the memories not as objective elements, but as events that occur, resulting from the dynamic relationship between body and past: ‘I generally work with the idea of a memory, or the memory of an idea. It is in the way it happens that I find inspiration from. For me this recollection happens within the contradiction of filling an absence that can’t be filled any more. With my work I try keeping track of things that can no longer be kept, but in this way I can hold on to them’, she affirms.

She doesn’t see memory as an accurate recollection of events, rather a selective process of preserving. But the things that touch us, which mark our lives are well kept in our memories and help us relate to the present and looking into the future. 

Weaving and sewing have always represented, mythologically and symbolically, history and memory; the act of knotting threads has an emotional value.

Raquel takes up the technique, but reinterprets it in a pictorial key, creating overlapping sets and abstract compositions.

An organic work, delicate and light, that holds in both the imperfections and the falling threads, the gaze of a child, a bit like Giovanni Pascoli when states that in every man there is a child capable of perceiving reality with naive spirit and clear eyes .

About Raquel Bessudo

Raquel Bessudo is a Jewellery artist based in Mexico City, holding a BA (Hons) Fine Arts degree from CSM College of Arts an Design London UK, 2000. Her work has been exhibited worldwide in Mexico, Argentina, USA, Australia and Europe. She received a special mention from the Jury on the occasion of the II Contemporary Jewellery Latin-American Biennale 2018, “Neighbours”.
 
www.raquelbessudo.com

Image Credits (Top to bottom)

Raquel Bessudo
Memory of a day VI, 2017
Iron, textile, polyester threads, copper, stainless steel (mechanism).

Raquel Bessudo: Memory of a day VII, 2017
Iron, textile, merino wool, felt textile pen, polyester threads, copper, stainless steel (mechanism).

Raquel Bessudo: Paths IV, 2018
Iron, textile (Pellon), acrylic paint, polyester thread.

Raquel Bessudo: Paths II, 2018
Iron, textile (Pellón), acrylic paint, gesso, polyester thread.

Raquel Bessudo: Paths VII, 2018
Textile, acrylic paint, polyester thread.
Photo by: Bertha Herrera

Raquel Bessudo: Tracings II, 2016
Iron, copper, enamel, graphite, powder coating.

Raquel Bessudo: Brooch: Tracings IV, 2016
Iron, copper, enamel, graphite, powder coating.

Raquel Bessudo: Necklace: Tracings VII, 2016
Iron, copper, enamel, graphite, powder coating.

Raquel Bessudo: Shared spaces I, 2018
Textile, paint acrylic, thread polyester, silver 925, cooper, gesso.
Photo by: Bertha Herrera

Raquel Bessudo: Paths VIII, 2019
Textile, acrylic paint, polyester thread, magnets.
Photo by: Bertha Herrera
From series: Constructed

Raquel Bessudo: Paths X, 2019
Textile, acrylic paint, magnets.
Photo by: Bertha Herrera
From series: Constructed

About the Contributing Writer