Veronika Fabian - You, me and your stuff
In You, Me and Your Stuff, Veronika Fabian reconstructs important, personal, everyday objects as pieces of jewellery. Part of a wider research project for her MFA thesis, and encompassing not just jewellery but also poetry, music and short stories, she investigates how we express our identity and experience through the objects that are most precious to us. Jewellery, she says, becomes ‘an intermediary between the self and society and a mediator of value and identity.’ Each piece is a visual interpretation of an essential aspect of the owner’s life. The vodka bottles transformed into Drunk Chain represent addiction and deviance; Voulez- Vous recollects the blossoming of childhood independence and the passage into adolescence and the Masquerade’s slices of perfume bottles symbolise the Sisyphean pursuit of perfection and the masks we use to hide of our true selves. The newer work in the exhibition has its genesis in Veronika’s time at Ravary as a Marzee Graduate Show prize winner during the summer of 2019. The bottles of wine drunk round the table became a necklace suffused with memories of shared experiences at the workshop. Continuing the series during lockdown, she has focused her attention on other objects that are the fabric of our shared personal encounters – a coffee with friends or a glass of wine in the evening with loved ones. They are simple but poignant reminders of normal, everyday life that feels very far away right now.
In addition to the pieces, the project expands across mediums, comprising short stories and several musical singles produced in a collaborative project – experimenting with an interdisciplinary approach for intricate biography of the works. The poems serve as portraits to introduce each of the works in more depth. They were written by Kristof Hajos and are mostly fictional but have their foundation in my research.
Other collaborators are: Ambrus Tovishazi (music), Akos Mesterhazy (video editing), Martijn van Ooststroom, Jo Bloxham, J. P. Cardeira and Marilyn Volkman as narrators. The roles they are impersonating are the: the retired motorcyclist, who gives his beloved leather jacket as a present to her granddaughter’s 18th birthday, passing on an important signifier of his identity; the middle-aged woman thinking back on her life; the tipsy chain maker; the diet obsessed girl; the narrator of the boy’s story who spends his first allowance on buying an ABBA vinyl record.
