07/13/2020
Art Jewelry Forum: Can you tell us how Tamagit diverges from a traditional gallery? Why do you describe Tamagit as both an incubator and a gallery?
Marta Tamagit: Louise Bourgeois said, “I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands…”
I personally love the etymological meaning of the word “gallery.” It’s mysterious and I connect it with the emotion I feel when entering a cloister. A gallery, in its original meaning, is a covered passageway open to the exterior in some way, allowing light and outer influence. We call Tamagit a gallery and an incubator: this last word expresses that same feeling and sense of intimacy of a gallery—an inner space that makes us think, feel, develop, and that prepares us for when we go outdoors for exchange.
To me personally, art jewelry is precisely that: an intimate experience, a true dialogue, a prayer, and at the same time an open expression of multiple statements. Art jewelry is a language, a way to express what words cannot express; a journey from the inside to the outside and vice versa; a dynamic and ever-changing translation process. Tamagit wants to act as a translator here. So there’s no specific word that describes who we are and what we do.
We are a modest, but I believe unique, incubator of artists and wearers/collectors. We want to understand our artists in depth and transfer their stories to the other side. And we are just as interested in the wearers’ or collectors’ stories. What does that piece of jewelry mean to them? How has it transformed them? Why did they decide to purchase it? In this sense, I consider Tamagit to be a wearer- and artist-centered platform, as we’re very interested in the journey of the piece from the artist to the end wearer or collector. That translation process is what makes us different.
Moreover, we want to foster the dialogue between art jewelry and other artistic or creative expressions and bring art jewelry closer to professionals who love and consume art and culture (“celeBRAINities”) as well as to artists from different fields who might not be aware of its existence.
As we can’t do a better job than the amazing art jewelry galleries out there which we really admire and owe so much to, we’ve opted to communicate and tell stories, to (inter)act off the traditional circuits, to break the showcase, and bring jewels closer to society, to persons who might have the need and desire to learn more about art jewelry but who might not know where to start.
As I said before, art jewelry is a language—a language that evolves and is nonverbal. I want to relate and translate certain works of art jewelry to wearers or collectors. It’s my dream to decipher some jewels as a sum of mysterious codes: the morphology of materials, the syntax of technique, the semantics of the concept behind the piece.
Nassrin Vessalian, The Wound of the Land, 2018, brooch, latex, acrylic resin, acrylic paint, steel, 120 x 75 mm, photo: artist, 2018
Read full interview on Art Jewelry Forum
