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'Carolina Apolonia’s Untitled Brooch (2016) is a modest construction: an oxidized sheet of silver is pierced with a pattern of small holes, and then attached to a faceted frame of painted fiberboard. Fiberboard and paint are everyday building materials, and the silver hides its beauty and value behind a layer of dull blackness, appearing like steel or some other metal that is regularly encountered in the built environment.
There is a nod to jewelry conventions in the facets (one of the classic ways of handling precious stones so they sparkle and magnify the play of light) and in the way the pattern of small holes displays a changing arrangement of light and dark depending on how it is held and the background on which it is placed (like the sparkle of diamonds). But as Apolonia makes clear in her artist statements, her intention is to evoke a kind of abstracted representation of the urban environment, which in turn becomes a reflection on the psychological dimensions of how people inhabit cities, and the ties that bind them to each other and the places and spaces in which they live. The perforations are like the windows of buildings, small openings into a myriad of private worlds, while the wooden construction of the brooch conjures both the exterior shape of buildings and the spaces that these walls, ceilings and floors enclose.' Damian Skinner, 2018, The Deedie Rose collection, Dallas Museum of Art |
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The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.
(excerpt)
Maya Angelou