What's Precious?

When we deprioritize jewelry’s monetary value, what else is precious to us in adornment?

1239 Broadway
8th Floor
NY, NY 10001
Fri, Nov 18
5:00pm – 12:00am
Sat, Nov 19
10:00am – 8:00pm
Sun, Nov 20
10:00am – 8:00pm

The artists participating in What’s Precious? offer ways to acquire adornment other than exchanging money.

How can we celebrate and care for ourselves and each other through accessible adornment? Nine artists have been invited to create experiences or pieces that signify how making adornment accessible can generate community care, propagate abundance, and invite connection.

The joy of expression is familiar to all of us as we dress ourselves in the ways we feel most happy and comfortable. In jewelry, this pure joy can sometimes be overshadowed by the desire to boast of wealth. Expressing ourselves through adornment can be a form of non-verbal vulnerability to the world that also allows us to be intimate with ourselves, our own delights. Liberation in expression is ultimately an invitation to connect. When that invitation is accepted, it is a mutual validation of each other’s existence and pleasure.

The exhibition will include forums for sharing ideas between makers, curated by Ada Chen, and a book launch by collaborator, Kate Connell. A zine with work from the exhibition will be published.

Join us November 18th at 5:00pm for an opening reception and artist talk, followed by a night market, open until midnight! RSVP here.

Each artist will host workshops on Saturday, November 19th and Sunday, November 20th.

Learn more about Saturday’s workshops here.

Learn more about Sunday’s workshops here.

Participants

Sulo Bee

is a non-binary interdisciplinary maker and art jeweler. Their work is a response to their identity and how they define the queerness of the space between self and contemporary society.
Taisha Carrington

is a Barbadian multidisciplinary artist working in performance, sculpture, body adornment, and installation. Her work seeks to promote solidarity with the land and investigate the liminality of life in the Caribbean after colonialism and into the anthropocene.
Ada Chen

is a jeweler and interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She creates work based on her identity as a Chinese American woman and is exploring anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, abolitionist themes.
Kate Connell

is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in San Francisco. Her studio work is focused on small, sometimes wearable sculpture and she and her partner, Oscar Melara, collaborate on social practice projects as Book & Wheel.
Tanya Crane

is a jewelry artist living in Providence, Rhode Island. As a Professor of the Practice in Metals at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, Crane works across disciplines much in the way she approaches her jewelry and sculpture.
Mac Do

is a queer multidisciplinary artist with an emphasis in special effects makeup and set design. Their work is largely informed by Chinese mythology, monster films, and fantasy videogames.
Nesftaly Gomez

is the creator of Neftale Jewelry: hand sewn using fabric and beads to create detailed designs that have a personal story. Colorful fabrics and beads are used to create jewelry that represents her identity and culture.
Zi (Zhiyu) Lu

is a trans Han/Hakka artist working with tattoo as a collaborative sculptural practice as well as other multi-media practices. They see tattoo as a therapeutic medium that connects with their diasporic community by retelling migration Stories and one that connects with their trans community as tattoo helps folks reclaim their bodies’ agency through its body adornment quality.
Ashley Khirea Wahba

is an Egyptian-American artist working primarily in jewelry and digital media. Her work is rooted in rebellion and explores themes of reclamation, signaling, and identity as they exist IRL and URL within the algorithmic age.