Four colorful necklaces draped over a white folded stand, one display among 60 in a handsome exhibit of "Paper Jewellery", a new show at Milan’s Triennale Design Museum. The work of peasant women in northern Uganda thus placed side by side with that of the finest jewelry artists in the world. As I walked the exhibit, I thought yet again of the evolution of our beaders’ work from simple to exceptional and how it came be chosen by the curators of "Paper Jewellery" for inclusion in this amazing show.
During the afternoon press conference, I listened to the Triennale’s Vice-President exhort the “women of Milan” to think about paper in a new way, to consider how this humble medium can be reworked by skilled hands and become fashionable art. “Ladies, will you wear paper jewelry?” he challenged the women in the room and beyond. “Can you accept that it can be stylish, beautiful and fun, and that it creates its own fashion statement?”
From the beginning, the reaction to our beaders’ work has always been, “I can’t believe it’s made of paper.” At the crowded opening of the exhibit, this was a consistent reaction to many of the items on display. Fanciful cutouts, layered cardboard, paper bent, twisted and pleated into dramatic shapes. Our paper beads were not the most creative or stylish in the room, but they fit in perfectly; and among all the stunning, often startling pieces, they are probably the most unique: necklaces that take paper into the realm of fashion while taking women and their families out of poverty. Paper as pearls, paper as beauty, paper transformed and transforming. Northern Uganda―poor and marginalized, torn apart by war and displacement―now has another story to tell.
"Paper Jewellery" will be in Milan until October 25th. It will then travel internationally, returning to Italy in July 2010, where it will be on display at the Paper Museum of Fabriano in Umbria throughout the summer.
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