Darja Popolitova at TASE15

In my master’s thesis ANDROGYNY: JEWELLERY BEYOND GENDER, I consider the concept of androgyny through the transformation and merging of the female and male dualities. What qualities of androgyny apply to jewellery? Do materials have distinct genders? How could I connect the components to represent wholeness without simply combining the jewellery components? I shaped my interpretation into the desired form, and by doing so, I materialised the concept of androgyny.

My jewellery collection symbolises the rhythm of duality in two series. The series FAZIS represents the development of androgyny and the two parts yearning to be whole. In the initial phase, the fusion is still apparent, and the only thing revealed is the establishment of relations in favour of flowing transitions. While I left the components of the FAZIS series in isolation, the merging occurred in the next series METANOIA where the result of androgyny is to find the lost halves of a whole.

Through the gradually unfolding rhythms, I found the materials I wished to use: homogeneous hybrid materials (synthetically processed natural materials). I used digital technologies to contextualise androgyny through form and materials.

Before the jewellery components became a finished piece, they had to undergo several phases of modification — from physical to digital. Similar to a principle of androgyny is digital technology’s ‘bodiless’ character, which, on the other hand, demands the physical opportunity to cross the limits.

Tanel Veenre, Estonian jewellery artist and designer says about this research art project:

‘Darja Popolitova’s view of androgyny is one of the most exceptional thematic representations that entered the art jewellery discourse. Exhibited works consider androgyny (not to confuse with hermaphroditism) as an idealised landscape where human relations are not poisoned with hostility or sexual frustration. The concept of gender is considered the disintegration of the wholeness that generated male and female duality.’

Estonian Academy of Arts
Tallinn 2015