Boldly and warmly, Ana Wagner gives a preciously accurate body to the spirit of the accelerated time of recent years. Sheer actuality joins eternal truth. The ecstatic experience of physical finitude is an opportunity for rebirth

 

The collection connects us to the the spirit of our time, obsessed with physical finitude, death and degradation. All these jewels include the symbol of the skull placed into vital contexts that suggest blooming. Their tender airy beauty allows us to carry and live the message of our times: accept physical finitude and open the door to a dormant spirituality or even to a never suspected one.

If a creator like Alexander McQueen brought the skull back among the current symbols of our contemporary world, giving it a touch of drama, sometimes a little bit of laughter, sometimes a touch of sarcasm, Ana Wagner’s paradigm is different: it’s a feminine view.

Alexander McQueen used the skull in the meditative drama of the „savage beauty“, perfectly illustrated by the author’s photographs as Hamlet. Ana Wagner has a feminine approach, bringing the skull symbol literally in bloom.

Ana herself relates her Inbloom collection to the spirit that gave birth to the Mexican phenomenon called dia de los muertos: it is the day when the dead are expected to return to the world of the living; they are welcomed, greeted with great honours, bright and colourful clothes, dances, processions, goodies and all kinds of sweets shaped as… skulls! We are witnessing a celebration of life enjoyed both in this world and in the other world.

This celebration is the living testimony of the encounter between two cultures that confronted and finally merged on Mexican soil: Aztec and Christian.

There was an Aztec goddess portrayed as a woman bearing skulls – they were seeds of life and symbols of the continuity and permanence of the human spirit (since the skull was the seat of vital force, but also of spirit and consciousness). The Christian view shifted this image towards a Pieta, acquiring meaning through the christian concept of ressurrection and life. In Dia de Los Muertos ceremonies, the skull is an accurate image of the process of resurrection, as natural as blooming.

Ana could have called her collection Carpe Diem or Stop and Smell the Roses. Graciously located here among flowers and fine details, the skull doesn’t have the mission to frighten us, but to draw our attention to the intensity that each moment of life demands of us. Also to remember that we only have two chances to access eternity: beauty and love. They are the very core values and aesthetic directions of the Wagner House of Jewellery.

Inbloom remind us that experiencing beauty is both a physical and spiritual experience.

With their smooth texture and mirror-like shine, the skulls created by Ana are fashioned from the purest earth and sand, burnt in pure fire and painted with the gold of the sages. They look at us with all the kindness and softness of pearls, in the same time activating the touch of awe that South American crystal skulls inspire.