Dan Piersinaru on the AUTOR Award @ CENRAL SAINT MARTINS experience:
“In 2017 I first came into contact with Central Saint Martins – BA Jewellry Design during Munich Jewelry Week. The quality of both the exhibition, as well as the jewelry pieces was exquisite so, naturally, I wanted to meet the tutors who curated the show. Thus, I met Caroline Broadhead, Lin Cheung and Giles Last for the first time.
This occasion also led to the selection of one of the projects to be, afterwards, featured in AUTOR Magazine #4 – the SENSES issue. Following this encounter, in 2017 I was also invited to Central Saint Martins – BA Jewellry Design’s exhibition degree. Another great experience translated in a diverse, complex and well organized show, during which, each graduated exhibited his jewelry collection for the final diploma. Giving the fact that almost all the projects were related to contemporary art and jewelry, I felt the strong impulse to create a strong connection with the BA Jewellry Department and to give a rather consistent award to a young graduate.
This year, after the AUTOR Fair 2018 experience and with a little bit of an impulse given by artist Tere Chadwick, who was participant at the fair and a graduate from Central Saint Martins, I wrote to Caroline Broadhead, course leader, proposing that we could start a collaboration and we can give an AUTOR award. Her reply was an instant and a positive one. So we were very happy and truth be told, I was also looking forward to having another reason to visit London sooner.
Once I got there, the first stop was Granary Square to see the exhibition show. Caroline was very nice to give me a custom tour of all 40 graduates. It turned out that picking out a winner would be more difficult than I thought! On the spot, I noticed a remarkable thing, namely, the individuality of each collection, from political views, to social reactions, pure poetry, conceptualism or minimalism. To make my decision easier, I selected the first seven graduates whose collections impressed me the most: Yuzhuo Fu, Shengyi Chen, Veronika Fabian, Emine Gulsal, Eloise Kramer, Matilde Mozzanega and Ariel Yc Tsai. Their professor, Lin Cheung, let them know that they were on the shortlist for the award and I went and spoke to each and every one of them. The conversation was exciting and interesting, which did not ease my task at all, on the contrary 🙂
The criteria for selecting the final winner was: a coherent concept of the collection, the execution of the jewelry pieces, and last, but not least, the way the collection would match with the AUTOR Fair target audience, in order to create the proper context for the winner, who will come to Bucharest in 2019.
An hour later, I had taken my decision; for this new collaboration of AUTOR award with Central Saint Martins I have selected: Yuzhuo Fu, with a collection inspired by the ZEN spirit and Chinese Gongbi paintings. An extremely sensitive and poetic collection, that recreates the connection between nature and human body. Yuzhuo was extremely happy and emotional about receiving the award and we are excited and looking forward to having her at AUTOR 2019, in May.
I wish I could have awarded all the graduates present on my short list; however I was very satisfied to see that most of them have already received awards with longer history at Central Saint Martins – BA Jewellry Design and we will surely have them on our Instagram posts.
The AUTOR Award consists of a free of charge participation in the following edition of AUTOR fair (May, 2019), a full page in the new issue of the magazine and one year promotion in our media channels.
Special thanks to: Caroline Broadhead, Lin Cheung, Giles Last, Maria Militzi and Tere Chadwick.
Big congrats to Giles Last for his new position as head of department at the BA Jewellry Design Course at Central Saint Martins!
See you all next year!”
Dan Pierșinaru
