On and Off: Jewelry in the Wider Cultural Field

Art jewelry forum

essay contributions:

Kiff Slemmons: Living on indian land

and

Kerianne quick’s fob

Art Jewelry Forum, 2016

Editor: Ben Lignel

On and Off is a collection of 30 short essays on jewelry in the wider cultural realm, reflecting the editorial mission of AJF, a global nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the creation, study, and appreciation of art jewelry. Reporting on contemporary practice, AJF’s latest publication examines jewelry’s provocative place in human affairs.

Contemporary jewelry is defined by its range of cultural references and willingness to tackle contentious issues. On and Off depicts this conversation between incorporated social norms and creative agendas, exploring those phenomena that inform and complicate jewelry’s history—sex, domination, self-identification, territory, and death.

About half of the essays focus on individual works, while the other half engage with jewelry’s agency in the social, political, and private spheres. The collection as a whole invites some of the meatier subjects of human affairs to the jewelry table: cultural appropriation, social engineering, political propaganda, or jewelry-mediated empowerment.

With essays by:

David Beytelmann, Nigel Borell, Monika Brugger, Cécile Bulté, Susan Cohn, Anna Conticello, Liesbeth den Besten, Rutger Emmelkamp, Julie Ewington, Mònica Gaspar, Stephen Knott, Marthe Le Van, Baptiste Lignel, Jillian Moore, Stephen Mulqueen, Elisabeth Murphy, Kevin Murray, Kerianne Quick, Suzanne Ramljak, Amina Rizwan, Damian Skinner, Emily Stoehrer, Timothy Information Limited, Namita Gupta Wiggers, and Marilyn Zapf.