Maria Dima - Unde (Romania)
MARIA DIMA
Biography:
I started my journey as a jeweler around 4 years ago, after discovering my creativity during my acupuncture therapy and took the wax jewelry course at Assamblage Institute in Bucharest.
At the beginning, most of the time I worked on custom orders and posted my creations online to attract new customers and see if my art is liked by people so I can go on in this direction. I art as a self discovery, as a journey of my spirit and my interest is in inspiring and evolving with other people with the same beliefs.
After 2 years, I created the brand UNDE, a Romanian word game, meaning „where” and „frequencies” at the same time. As a personal aim I want people to see beauty in everything, to rediscover jewelry as a way to express and be in love with the Universe as it is, with life and death at the same time. That’s why my style is somehow medieval and a little witchy. I think this became my signature.
Collection Concept:
Broken tradition. City Glass
The collection started last year, and it was inspired by tradition and old symbols. I first saw the signs in Virgil Vasilescu’s books about past civilizations’ symbols in our region, passed on through generations in various expressions: knitting, sewing, ceramics, wood working, etc
Further inspiration came from visiting the Astra Museum in Sibiu, where so many of the signs from the book were revealed to me and became symbols.
I suddenly understood that all the these old signs were not just art, were something that lived and still lives inside us, and explains the way we relate to God/Universe. As you keep on watching them you start to hear old songs, you feel the love of the hands that made the artifact, like a portal to a protected place.
After that came the glass...the city glass, all the little, broken glass pieces that –for example- remain after an accident. Not at all precious, not at all wanted. I started collecting them and also thinking more and more about the glass buildings. If you look at a glass building, you will see yourself. It’s not symbolic; it doesn’t have any spiritual charge or any relation with our tradition. It just reflects.
So I combined these opposites that I was feeling...the old symbolism as a portal, as a connection with what’s precious and dear to the heart and the new city glass, as just a reflection of us, humans, of the ego.
