EPISTULAE, 2019

The collection is based on the impressions of reading Ovid’s “Letters from Pontus” and “Sorrowful Elegies”. In the 1st century A.D., the Roman poet was exiled to a distant city on the Black Sea coast, to the outskirts of the civilized world, where he closed his days. All his pain, loss, loneliness and perceived unfairness were poured out in his last poems. However, in these same poems we see the invariable strength of the spirit, the readiness of culture to resist a hostile environment, the inextinguishable hope of deliverance, inner freedom, the confidence that the woes embodied in verse will remain in history and art for centuries, and this is their great value and victory.

A collection of pendants made of transparent, almost untreated topaz, aquamarine and quartz with laser engraving of Ovid’s poems was created for installation in the National Archaeological Museum of Adria (Italy) in 2019, where it was exhibited together with vessels made of ancient Roman glass from the 1st century A.D. Each piece corresponds to its own vessel, giving a reference to the tradition of sending letters in bottles to the sea for future generations. Transparent pendants look like petrified waters of the raging elements, through which the poet risked his life to reach the place of exile, or like pieces of ice, first seen and amazed the poet in the north, or like frozen accumulated tears that turned into poems. This is a conversation about the transformation of the fragile and strong, fluid and solid, eternal and fleeting.

This collection was presented at exhibition ORNAMENTA II 2019: Jewels between history and design. The main idea of ORNAMENTA II  was that contemporary jewelry is shown side by side to ancient glass objects especially exhibited for the occasion.

Exhibitions:
2021, 8th of October to 10th of November, art gallery “Lalabeyou”, Madrid, Spain
2020/2021, 12th of December 2020 to 13th of February 2021, art gallery “Alliages”, Lille, France
2019, 12th of May to 24th of October, The National Archaeological Museum Of Adria, Adria, Italy