Wearable Sculpture — Post-Colonial Gold
The Object
This wearable sculpture contains a Zeeland button partially buried within a dark, volcanic material. Only fragments of the ornament remain visible. The object appears less displayed than discovered, as if it has resurfaced after being hidden for a long time.
The surrounding material does not frame the button like traditional jewelry. Instead, it obscures and absorbs it. The historical ornament survives only in traces. What the viewer encounters is not a decorative emblem, but the quiet evidence of something that once belonged to a person.
In this sense the work stands in dialogue with Sophie Calle, whose artistic practice often reveals human presence through the traces people leave behind — objects, rooms, documents, or fragments of everyday life.
The ring holds an object that seems to carry a life beyond the sculpture itself.