Wearable Sculpture Post-Colonial Gold
This wearable sculpture contains a fragment of a Zeeland button, partially embedded within a dense, dark mineral mass. Only a small part of the ornament remains visible.
The object is not presented as jewelry. It appears rather like a fragment that has resurfaced, as if it had been buried and rediscovered over time.
What remains visible is not a complete ornament, but a trace of something that once belonged to a person.
The Zeeland button originates from traditional Dutch regional costume. Within this context, jewelry did not function solely as decoration but also as a marker of community, religion, and social order.
In this sculpture the button is neither restored nor polished. It is embedded within a rough material resembling volcanic stone or cooled lava. The historical metal and the raw mineral structure meet here as two different layers of time.
The ornament remains present, but it loses its original function as a visible symbol of status.
For centuries gold represented a system of value based on possession, status, and material wealth. Jewelry made this value visible on the body.
Post-Colonial Gold proposes another form of value.
Instead of gold, the central element here is attention. Attention to the traces of human presence that remain within objects.
Where gold derives value from rarity and ownership, value here emerges from the act of looking and recognizing meaning.
The Zeeland button once formed part of a living cultural system. It signified identity, belonging, and social position.
In this sculpture it appears as a fragment of that past. The button still carries history, but it is no longer presented as a symbol of status.
Its value no longer lies in the gold itself, but in the trace of human life that the object preserves.
Within the series Post-Colonial Gold, this sculpture represents the alternative value of Attention.
Attention is a form of value that cannot be measured, stored, or possessed like gold.
It emerges in the moment of looking.
By observing the fragment closely and noticing what remains visible, the object becomes meaningful again.
Value shifts from what the object is worth to what we learn to see within it.
This work emerged from the idea that objects often contain more human history than they initially reveal.
By partially embedding the Zeeland button within a mineral mass, the ornament transforms from a visible status symbol into a carrier of memory.
The ring does not ask for possession, but for attention.
Its value appears only when the viewer is willing to truly look at the fragment.
In a time shaped by speed, consumption, and constant digital visibility, the ability to truly pay attention has become rare. Objects are often valued for their market price rather than the histories they carry.
By focusing on a small fragment of a Zeeland button, this work invites the viewer to slow down and recognize the human traces embedded in material culture. Here, value shifts from possession to attention.
