Concrete Wearable Sculpture
Post-Colonial Gold — Statement Series
Wearable sculpture encasing a traditional Zeeland button in black concrete. The original ornament is concealed. Only a single exposed core remains.
The Zeeland button historically functioned as a visible sign of status within traditional dress. It communicated origin, class, religion and marital position. Visibility implied legibility. Legibility implied control.
By encasing the button in concrete, the social code is suspended. The object can no longer be read as a marker of identity. Ornament is reduced to a core.
Within the Post-Colonial Gold series, gold is examined not as decoration but as structure — as a carrier of hierarchy and value.
What remains is not uniform, not classification, not display.
Only the core.
Materials: concrete, metal core
Year: 2026
Edition: unique piece
Description
This object consists of a traditional Zeeland button fully encased in black concrete. The original ornamentation is not visible. Only the central sphere has been sanded free and remains as a smooth, light element within the dark mass.
The concrete surface is rough and absorbs light. The form is closed. The former status symbol is no longer immediately recognizable.
Material & Structure
The Zeeland button was part of traditional regional dress and functioned as a visible sign of position. It communicated regional origin, marital status, religion, class, and wealth.
Traditional dress was rarely a form of free expression. Within these communities, identity was made legible through fixed variations. Deviation was visible, and visibility implied control.
The button confirmed one’s place within a collective order. It was not a personal statement but a social marker.
By placing the button under concrete, this legibility is suspended. The object can no longer be interpreted as a sign of status or origin. The repetition of ornament is reduced to a single visible core.
Value Transformation
The intervention shifts the object from status symbol to concentrated form. Gold loses its function as visible legitimation of wealth.
What once served to confirm position is withdrawn from inspection. Value shifts from display to presence.
Post-Colonial Gold
Within Post-Colonial Gold, gold is not celebrated as a cultural pinnacle but examined as a carrier of hierarchy and social ordering.
The Zeeland button belonged to a system in which material wealth and social position were made visible. By encasing it in concrete, this system is not destroyed but suspended.
The core remains visible, detached from its original hierarchy.
Resonance
In a contemporary context in which identity is once again expressed through visible symbols and heritage, this work proposes another position.
What happens when a historical sign can no longer be read? When ornament no longer enables classification?
What remains is neither uniform nor social code.
Only a core that no longer classifies.
Artist Reflection
An investigation into how traditional symbols function within systems of visibility and social ordering.
By placing a Zeeland button under concrete and leaving only a single element visible, the status symbol is withdrawn from its disciplining function.
The intervention does not remove the past, but alters the conditions under which it can be seen.
What remains visible is not decoration.
It is the core, detached from the system that once defined its meaning.
#TheInvisibleThreshold #PostColonialGold #WearableArchitecture #CristinaIglesiasDialogue #ValueRepositioned