Daniella Saraya
Textile, Fashion & Jewelry Design
Award for an emerging designer
The way in which I think and create jewelry has changed in recent years, from objects to actions (wearing). Understanding the wearing of jewelry as an everyday act led me to try and
use it to create intentional, singular acts centered around the human body.
In “body” I mean all our being, our physical and spiritual representation, our appearance, movements and gestures, thoughts and feelings. Our biography, the language in which we
speak and sometimes even things that we are not, things we could perhaps have been, or things society reflects through us. For me the most significant part of jewelry is the people
who wear them, the body that gives them movement and life and turns them from items into valuable actions. The body is not a passive, neutral background that carries the jewelry but a
person whose complex identity is part and parcel of the creation.
I found myself thinking a lot about my own identity and that of the women in my family My grandmother Rosa, who immigrated from Lebanon at a young age and did everything to
erase the traces of her Arab identity, and my mother Shlomit, who became religious, changed her appearance, and moved to Jerusalem’s Jewish Orthodox neighborhood of MeaShearim. The changes in the way they adorned themselves to integrate into society and to express their new identity is a constant preoccupation. But I am even more interested in mutuality: in the way in which the object affects the body and the body the object.
use it to create intentional, singular acts centered around the human body.
In “body” I mean all our being, our physical and spiritual representation, our appearance, movements and gestures, thoughts and feelings. Our biography, the language in which we
speak and sometimes even things that we are not, things we could perhaps have been, or things society reflects through us. For me the most significant part of jewelry is the people
who wear them, the body that gives them movement and life and turns them from items into valuable actions. The body is not a passive, neutral background that carries the jewelry but a
person whose complex identity is part and parcel of the creation.
I found myself thinking a lot about my own identity and that of the women in my family My grandmother Rosa, who immigrated from Lebanon at a young age and did everything to
erase the traces of her Arab identity, and my mother Shlomit, who became religious, changed her appearance, and moved to Jerusalem’s Jewish Orthodox neighborhood of MeaShearim. The changes in the way they adorned themselves to integrate into society and to express their new identity is a constant preoccupation. But I am even more interested in mutuality: in the way in which the object affects the body and the body the object.