STUCK, 2022 / 2023

The perpetual chase for novelty, trend and profit, combined with exponential innovations in technology, have decreased the value of items in our lives. With the proliferation of production almost every thing is disposable, prompting a cycle of incessantly searching for objects that have emotional merit.

We passionately collect, amassing assortments that narrate our histories; prompting polemics where we feel stuck between sentimentality and physical limitations – between the memories we want to keep and the items that hold them.

This project started when I came upon a bag of my grandmother’s jewelry I’d been saving in a locked fireproof box. I didn’t have a personal connection to any of the pieces and kept them in a dark, enclosed space solely out of posterity. These were not things I would actively wear: they were practical deficits with affective abundance. To keep them was to live in emotional clutter, but to throw them away was living in stoic sterility. I felt stuck. And not just with the jewelry, but with the overarching dichotomy between holding on to outdated traditions and embracing a devoid future.