The earth surface has been carved out for millennia in the hunt for resources to satisfy industrial greed. Human capacity for metals was such that by 2080, the largest metal reserve will be above ground, found in our very own cities and manufactured habitat.
Our buildings are now seen as ‘urban mines’.
Drawn by this poetic yet alarming phenomenon, I decided to investigate the shifting of this material’s source and excavating ways of putting myself in the character of a ‘city digger’.
Could the source of an object’s material nature its aesthetic and foster an emotional connection with its possessor?
Through gritty textures and sense of present-time epigraphy, this re-smelted scrapped aluminum is telling its material story. The result is a series of speculative renders, digitally crafted jewelries. Each one of them is connected to a particular scene from the neighborhood of Whitechapel, where I used to live.
They are battered rings, quite primitive, serving as reminders of our connection with the environment we inhabit.
IG: @victoria_pieter
