Born in Medellin, Colombia in 1967, and previously graduated as Attorney at Law (1990) with a Master in Business Administration (1998), Virginia Escobar quit her career in 2010, and began to study jewelry after fifteen years of professional experience. She first studied silversmith in Bogota, and then she learned jewelry design and techniques in the same city. In 2017 Virginia moved to Italy to enroll the MFA Jewellery & Body Ornament program at Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School in Florence, where she finished it in 2019. Her work has been exhibited in Colombia, where she lives, and she has also participated in important international exhibitions since the beginning of her career.
Jewelry is a human way of expression. It communicates emotions and feelings, and it is related to culture, power, politics, bodies, and identities. I am interested on creating pieces that can be worn on the body and connect with others. My creative process is attached to material experimentation and research. Transforming resources, reusing them and finding new meanings when I make pieces of jewelry, describes the way I work.
2023
Memory and identity. We lose our identity when we lose our memory. A sense of mute presence, loneliness, absence and melancholy arises when we are fading away because of memory loss. We fade away day-by-day, our remembrances begin to melt, and our past and present start to get confused. We experience emptiness as a whole, empty body and empty soul, but our eyes and sight remain there, conveying that present absence.
Capturing the process of losing our identity because of memory loss is the theme of this body of work. When our memory fails we gradually vanish, we become progressively smaller and slighter, we slowly disappear until the day we go forever away.
To create these pieces, I used bark collected from different trees during my stay at Atelier Ravary in Belgium, September 2023.
2022
Our appearance strongly changed during the pandemic. Moreover, the way we physically identify each other was unexpectedly different. A mask covered us all, and made it difficult to recognize people. This body of work, which is a further development of my previous series about identity, represents the first impression perceived when seeing all those masked–faces. These brooches are portraits of those hidden faces observed in a world suddenly full of just eyes.
2019
Marzee Graduate Price 2020,
Marzee Gallery, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
This body of work is about physical identity. I am interested in the ideas of uniqueness and individuality, and how society standards these days influence our perception of beauty and ageing. Nowadays, when cultural and individual identity play an important role in all their diversity, it's surprising to see how homogenized the “ideal appearance” has become. New and accessible technologies enable us to construct and deconstruct our corporal look, answering these general ideas of body perfection. This project is an invitation to recognize and value our uniqueness by applying techniques and materials related to the world of the "physical body industry". Sixty-five facemasks have been made using a self-created material based on make- up. Chiseling techniques, threads, staples, Sterling Silver, and steel wires are used to construct the pieces. Each facemask is exchangeable to be worn in a single steel wire necklace-device.
2017
Abrigo de Piel refers to the human skin. The skin, as the largest organ in the body, protects it from the external world, but also lets it communicate through the sense of touch. I use eggshells, sterling silver and shibuichi to construct these pieces.
2015
Torre Fornello Award Unconventional Jewellery Competition Selected Artist 2015
2014
Award Nomination - Premio Lápiz de Acero 2015, Colombia
I new beginning, reinventing oneself… The egg, considered as the universal symbol of life is the first cell, the beginning of everything.
2014
Award Nomination - Premio Lápiz de Acero 2014, Colombia.
“The next step in sculpture is motion”, Alexander Calder. I use silver wire to construct pieces that move and transform differently, following the user´s body shape.
2013
Feeling stressed, tense and frustrated. This body of work represents those moments when we are trapped and stuck as a consequence of our own decisions. Days when we feel despair, trying to find a way out.
2010
Award Nomination - Premio Lápiz de Acero 2010, Colombia
Award Nomination - Premio Traza Artesanal 2010, Colombia
Understanding death as a transformation process, as part of life.
These pieces come from experimental processes and special projects and exhibitions.
