Alli Geremia
she/her
Savannah, GA, USA
Alli Geremia is an artist and educator living in Savannah, GA. Her practice and research concerns the social nature of contemporary narrative jewelry.
“My work is large-scale non-traditional jewelry inspired by our expectations of the social usage of jewelry. I like to refer to my work as reflexive jewelry, as it often refers to jewelry’s history and its contemporary re-interpretation. My work is meant to expose our responses to jewelry and biases we have about the object, maker, viewer and wearer of a work.”
How does your work relate to the theme connection?
“My work considers the connection as one between the body and the art object. I work with brooches specifically because I’m interested in autonomous objects that we choose to put on our bodies.."
What role does connection play in your creative process?
“Throughout my creative process, connection plays the largest role when considering a mechanism for the work. I like to build specific mechanisms for each piece in order to build on the intimate relationship between the wearer and the work.."
What connection(s) does your queerness make to the world around you?
“Community-building is important to me. When I see people wearing my work, I feel that my voice has been recognized. Being heard and being seen are the first steps toward building a safe and healthy community.."
"Villanous" (Brooch), Enamel on copper, 3.5" x 2.5", 2024Anything else you would like to share about this work? This can be an important part of the process, sourcing materials, or research.
“This piece was inspired by my relationship with my university library’s special collections department. We’ve been working on building out more specific queer educational programming and, in the process, I noticed a theme that resonated with me. There were multiple books and mini-zines that considered the role of the villain and how early media characterized the queer community. As I continued to read, there were also more celebratory works following the same theme of the queer gothic. I wondered what it would be to reclaim the villainous character by wearing it outright as a brooch."