PREZIOSA is a cultural project, the first annual exhibition dedicated to Contemporary Jewellery in Italy. Every year the artistic approach to the complex subject of jewellery is explored through a specific concept and with the selection of artists from the international scene. Organized by LAO, Le Arti Orafe Jewellery School, has been an international competition since 2008 to promote the younger generations and encourage their creativity.

A selection of works of the winners of the 2021 edition is hosted at Hannah Gallery.

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PREZIOSA és un projecte cultural, la primera exposició anual dedicada a la joieria contemporània a Itàlia. Cada any s'explora l'aproximació artística al complex tema de la joieria a través d'un concepte concret i amb la selecció d'artistes del panorama internacional. Organitzat per LAO, Le Arti Orafe Jewellery School, és un concurs internacional des del 2008 per promoure les generacions més joves i fomentar la seva creativitat.

Una selecció d'obres dels guanyadors de l'edició 2021 es troba a la Hannah Gallery.

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After its first stage in Florence Jewellery Week 2022, the Preziosa Young winner's exhibition was shown at Galerie Door and now travels to Barcelona to be featured at Hannah Gallery. Our gallery already hosted in 2021 the 2020 edition of Preziosa Young.

Hannah Gallery organizes 4 to 5 exhibitions a year. Regularly collaborates with other galleries, and curators and advises diverse international organizations to create a bigger and more professional market.

Every year since 2008, Le Arti Orafe has organised a contest, dedicated to emerging artists selected through an international competition. The aim is to contribute to the circulation of what is new in research jewellery, as well as showcase what the new generations of goldsmiths-designers-artists are 'brewing'. The competition includes the awarding of two special prizes, one offered by LAO – a three-month stay in Florence as an artist in residence, and the other offered by the Inhorgenta fair: a free exhibition space for the next edition of the fair.

For the 2021 edition, Doreen Timmers, art historian, and owner of Galerie Door, along with six other professionals, has been asked to judge the entries. The 2021 edition, in which only young artists can participate, features five international winners:

Xinia Guan and Zhipeng Wang from China, Anne Lahn Hornbæk Hansen from Denmark, Pilynn Siriphanich from Thailand and Charlotte Vanhoubroeck from Belgium.

Among these five young artists, the jury judged the process of making and researching, the experimentation with techniques and materials, and the final piece of art jewellery itself as best and strongest. And this year, exceptionally, the two prizes went to the same candidate Charlotte Vanhoubroeck, who will be a guest of LAO laboratories, having the opportunity to work on a new collection that will be presented on the occasion of the school's end-of-year exhibition.
 
You are welcome to get acquainted with the work of these young talents.
Don't miss it.

More about all the winning projects by these emerging artists, who stood out among a large group of applicants:

Xinia Guan
The artist's work, as she states, is 'rooted in process'.
Concentration and patience transform technical expertise into a meditative practice. Her silver creations speak of a 'slow time', which allows her to delve into the geometry of shapes and patterns observed in nature. Rhythm, repetition, unity, and contrasts are the elements on which her goldsmith research is based, with the aim of giving material concreteness to the incessant flow of existence. The metal is sawn by hand, the dust diligently collected and converted into a new piece, metaphorically representing the hours spent at the goldsmith's bench and declaring a certain sensitivity towards the problem of waste in the profession. Thus, laser welding, preferred to traditional welding, allows her to decide on a more environmentally sustainable technology.
 
Anne Lahn Hornbæk Hansen
Fascinated by the cloisonné enamel technique during an exchange experience at the Glasgow School Of Art in 2017, Danish artist Anne Lahn Hornbæk Hansen decided to retrace the ancient process to translate into colour her joyful illustrations that celebrate the female body in all its differences and imperfections. The criticism made in the series FEMME AND FAB is to the falsified world of plasticized and glossy social media filters that offer a single model to which young women end up referring. These naked busts, to be worn as brooches, embody instead the most exuberant and proud spirit of the 'body positive' movement, proudly showing themselves hairy, flabby, decadent, and in all their precious and authentic variety.
 
Pilynn Siriphanich
The innovative material used by Pilynn Siriphanich is called 'Agricultural Waste Composite' and is the outcome of Onuma Wichaikul's doctoral research, Jewellery: The Thread of Self-Sufficiency (2020), focused on the creation of an alternative and sustainable material to be used in jewellery making. That is a compound inspired by the transparency and lightness of the plastic bag but made using natural fibres. It has involved a path punctuated with trial and error for the researcher. This series of failures -the leftovers- have become the main material of the collection, obeying the logic of upcycling, namely the creative recovery of waste. In doing so, the artist created jewels by folding the thin sheets into three-dimensional, light, and voluminous shapes.
 
Zhipeng Wang
The Chinese artist addresses the question of the identity of jewels, as objects that symbolize specific cultural traditions and as a declaration of belonging to a certain social class. The artist wonders how these values can survive today, in a globalized world where cultural singularities collide and mix. These signet rings are made of tea and coffee and used as allegorical representatives of Eastern and Western cultures, respectively. Just as the typology of the signet - no longer synonymous with luxury and prestige - the ritual of these drinks also has its origins in the tradition of nobility, now absorbed into the ordinariness of everyday life.
 
Charlotte Vanhoubroeck
The artist, art historian, and goldsmith, as part of her Ph.D. at the PXL-MAD School of Arts in Hasselt, wanted to bring to light the character of Louise-Marie d'Orleans through the study of her inventory, which records the existence of more than a hundred jewels belonged to her. The Stilled Sentiments collection allows not only to retrace and reread an important female figure such as the first queen of Belgium, but also to reveal a whole emotional world of memories and secrets hidden behind these jewels, which contain miniature portraits, locks of hair, and engraved messages. Those pieces, reinterpreted and filtered by the sensitivity of the artist, give life to a collection that tells the spirit of a new time.


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