Dina Abargil

Dina Abargil’s sculptural jewelry integrates a rich collection of materials, a broad range of production techniques as well as alchemical and symbolic actions. Dina Abargil believes that jewelry is a means by which to experience and interpret the emotional world. The necklaces that she creates are analogous to a musical development, acting like poetry, where each one has a different rhythm. Every piece is made and created as an independent element that adds a layer to the internal and emotional story inherent in the materials themselves; a kind of puzzle composed of different materials, new compositions as well as surprising and exciting encounters between the potential shapes, materials, symbols, codes and connections.

According to her “each substance in the necklace makes its contribution and, together, they constitute a type of dialog between the elements”. Aggregates that incorporate organic elements and artificial alloys (which Dina prepares by herself) reflect the conflict there is with the substance, the attempt to connect the impossible, the alien and the opposite into a new entity – which is material, configurational and three – dimensional. The struggle with the material, which is registered and marked in the jewelry itself, and the attempt to combine and consolidate connections which are foreign to each other, unraveling the perfect classical approach and providing the jewelry with a quality which is–at one and the same time– authentic, abstract, primitive and modern.

Pure and noble substances are connected in her work with perishable and everyday materials, foreign matters that are refined into abstract units–perchance geometric / perchance organic– configured units where every section leans against another section, creating tension between the circular movement which breaks and disconnects the sequence of the motion.
The jewelry reflects the disparity and the passion, a deep longing for a world that has not yet been defined, of beauty that is ‘different’, beyond what is obtainable and familiar; beauty that is hidden, secret, and yet the function of the jewelry is concrete and not necessarily decorative; it is practical and alive, designed to expose a conflict, to bring it near to the body rather than to adorn and refine it.

Written by Eti Abergel – sculptor, installation artist.