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Connections (2019): Projects

 CONNECTIONS (2019)

Photography series

A project about relationships and self-reflection where jewellery acts as the catalyst.

Connections (2019): Portfolio

About Connections

Connections is a project about relationships and self-reflection where jewellery acts as the catalyst.

 

Jewellery often ties to culture, tradition, personal and family history and self-expression – and in many cases, a person doesn’t recognize how vital these connections are until focus is brought to them. Therefore, Connections encourages participants to consider the stories their jewellery may represent, and the history that they hold. Connections as a project uses photographs of jewellery to communicate a narrative about the relationship between the item and its wearer. The project aims to give people a new way to view their jewellery and a means to explore why some of the items are so important to them and how this reflects on who they are.

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Each jewellery item is represented in a diptych. The pair of images represents the dichotomy of the inanimate object and the wearer who assigned the item its value. 

 

Connections was adapted into a collaborative project, titled The Stories of Our Jewellery, where seven artists shared their stories in the form of photos and the written word. This collaboration was part of Intac, the International Art Collaborations network.

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Connections placed in the Top 10 of ifolor's Photobook of the Year in 2020. 

Tellervo: the intergenerational connection

Connections (2019) got its start from a 1940's confirmation cross. For nearly a decade, I wore my great-grandmother's confirmation cross daily and it therefore often became a topic of conversation. Unconventionally, the pendant never held much religious value, at least for me, but as I would explain to people, its familial value to me was very personal and important. The cross pendant has passed through four generations since 1940. 

In accordance with her age, my great-grandmother Tellervo should have been confirmed already in 1939, but the war put a halt to such church practices until the spring of the following year (14.4.1940). My grandmother Leena was confirmed in 1962, and my mother Anne in 1985. I was born in 1998, in time to meet my great-grandmother before her passing in 1999. The only known photograph of the four of us was taken at my baptism - I find that to be beautifully allegorical. 

The confirmation cross was the first jewellery item in Connections (2019) and formed the foundation for the entire project. Influences from this project also contributed to my Bachelor's thesis project Golden Places (2022).

Connections (2019): Text
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