Wearable Sculpture — Post-Colonial Gold
The Object
This wearable sculpture consists of a dark, rough stone pierced by a small golden ring. The intervention is minimal. The stone remains largely untouched, its surface irregular and natural.
The golden ring passes through the stone as a quiet gesture rather than a display of wealth. Instead of transforming the stone into jewelry, the intervention marks it—almost like a small incision revealing a point of connection between materials.
The object appears both grounded and subtly altered.
Material
The sculpture combines two materials with very different symbolic histories.
The stone retains its raw and irregular character, suggesting something shaped by natural processes rather than by human design.
Gold, historically associated with value, wealth, and permanence, enters the stone through a single point. Rather than dominating the object, the gold remains restrained.
Together the materials evoke a quiet tension between earth and human intervention.
Core Idea
For centuries gold functioned as a universal measure of value, symbolizing wealth, power, and permanence.
Post-Colonial Gold proposes another way of thinking about value.
Instead of measuring worth through precious materials, the series explores cultural and human meanings that emerge from our relationship with the world around us.
This work reflects the value of Origin.
Meaning
The golden ring piercing the stone suggests a moment where human intervention meets the natural world.
The stone remains largely intact, carrying the presence of the earth itself. The small golden gesture does not dominate the material but establishes a point of contact.
The sculpture therefore evokes the idea that human existence remains inseparable from the landscapes that shape it.
Origin is not something distant in time. It remains embedded in the materials of the earth.
In Dialogue with Ana Mendieta
Ana Mendieta’s work repeatedly explored the relationship between the human body and the earth.
In her Silueta Series, the body appears as an imprint within soil, sand, or vegetation—a temporary trace reconnecting human presence with landscape.
Rather than presenting the body as separate from nature, Mendieta allowed it to dissolve into its surroundings.
This sculpture resonates with that gesture. The stone becomes a fragment of landscape, while the golden ring marks a point where human presence intersects with the earth.
Origin appears not as a fixed place, but as an ongoing relationship between body and ground.
Within Post-Colonial Gold
Post-Colonial Gold proposes an alternative system of value.
Instead of gold functioning as the universal measure of worth, each wearable sculpture represents a human value revealed through the work of women artists who reshaped contemporary art.
Across the series, value shifts away from material wealth toward cultural and existential meaning.
Origin
Identity
Dignity
Memory
Attention
Connection
Knowledge
Repair
Presence
Within this system, the present work represents Origin—the recognition that human identity ultimately remains rooted in the earth itself.
Artist Reflection
This work began with the idea that even the smallest gesture can reveal a deeper relationship between materials.
By inserting a thin golden ring into a rough stone, the sculpture creates a point where human intervention touches the earth without overwhelming it.
The object remains grounded in the material world, reminding us that origin is not something abstract, but something we continue to carry with us.