ABOUT THIS SHOW

Initiation is a participatory procedure on discovering the secret of creativity

Eight jewellery artists and designers visited Athens between June - September 2017 for an unusual Artist Residency: to discover whether the Greek tradition of jewellery and ornament - its motifs, designs and concepts - would still make sense to a contemporary jewellery maker striving for perfection in the highly competitive international market.

Greek jewellery speaks of life and death, of magic symbols to protect against evil or to achieve good luck and fortune, of a society combining pure reason with piety, of a faith viewing the seen and the unseen world as one united cosmos.

During the months of the residency, we visited the most important sites where Greek democracy and spirituality developed hand in hand. The title of the show refers to the initiation of mystics in a fearless attitude towards life and death. The secret to bliss was revealed during the holiest ceremony of the ancient world which took place once a year in Eleusina near Athens.
Today Eleusina is an industrial town with high unemployment and heavy pollution; few things remind visitors of its glorious past - at first sight. However, for the ones seeing beyond the obvious, Eleusina can be the challenge to dive inside one's own unconscious, the source of all secrets and creativity!

Like the ancient initiates had to search for the message of truth in the performance and spells of the hierophant, the eight participants of Initiation 2017 Sieraad dug through their thirst for knowledge and found inside themselves the passage leading to art excellence.

Enjoy the jewellery of this discovery!


Loukia Richards & Christoph Ziegler