Spot the Designer - Adriana Mosquera/ Mexico
What did you want to be when you were a child?
Singer.
When have you started creating jewelry? How did this passion come about?
When I arrived in Mexico for the first time, it was to discover a paradise full of colors, textures, and ancient culture. My archive was filled with incredible images that were crying out for space in the physical world, for someone else to be able to feel them, contemplate them for longer, and take them anywhere without the weight of the frame and without the fragility of virtuality that disappears them.
What was your first project or significant piece for you and from what point of view?
This necklace is one of the first pieces I created when this adventure began, in honor of the unique pine trees I found the first time I came to Mexico.
How do you charge your batteries? What other passions and creative interests do you have?
I love writing, dancing to Afro-Caribbean rhythms, discovering new melodies and musicians from all over the world, and visiting contemporary art exhibitions. I also enjoy exploring new places, whether in the city or in any natural environment.
What does the connection between manufacturing tradition and contemporary design mean to you?
Both enrich each other. The fusion of contemporary design with traditional techniques allows the perpetuation of ancestral knowledge. Likewise, it generates new dialogues and points of interaction between both disciplines, blurring their borders, expanding their technical possibilities, and offering new interpretations and meanings of what is understood as jewelry or ornament.
Is there a self-portrait piece that speaks most about you?
The Jacarandá is not only a symbol of the Mexican spring but also of the foreigner who found in his land a fertile and conducive environment to take root and flourish. This is my story, that of a foreigner who found her greatest inspiration in Mexico to transform her photographs into jewelry, thus preserving the essence of countless intangible moments. And allow many more of my own story to emerge. These pieces are part of my Spring collection, paying tribute to the history where this jewelry brand was born.
Which material have you not yet used is a temptation and a challenge for you?
Fabric.
How was the pandemic period for you as a jewelry designer?
The quarantine took each of us out of our comfort zone, away from our familiar places, and out of our usual practices. In my case, the quarantine took me out of Mexico, away from my workshop, my tools, and my workspace. This dislocation led me to think about alternative modes of creation, to validate jewelry from different perspectives, using different materials and processes. During the initial months of extreme isolation for everyone, I found myself searching for ways to escape my mind and transport it to places I couldn't physically inhabit, within the objects, images, and materials in my home.
In this quest, the vast visual array of travel magazines and their imagery became my gateway to start creating. I began by working with the first cutouts, creating abstractions that functioned as initial models of pieces to be worn on the body, allowing me to carry the longing for those possible and natural places with me. The process of crafting these pieces enabled me to bridge the gap between my role as a visual artist and my relationship with photographic images, personal archive images, and the advertising images that sell us earthly paradises.
Furthermore, I allowed myself to expand and redefine my mode of creation, reflecting from there on what a jewel, an accessory, or a wearable piece should or should not be. By showcasing the fragility and lightness of the materials, I aimed to reveal the dynamics and domestic context from which these pieces were created.
How do you see the future of contemporary jewelry?
A field full of textures, techniques, and ways of doing, essentially questioning the world in which we live, with multiple responses transformed into unconventional materials, a fusion of disciplines and techniques where artificial intelligence will have its place, to dislocate, coincide, or reflect. The human essence and the body for which the jewelry is designed.