Lia Musante
they/she
Philadelphia, PA, USA
Lia Musante is a maker working in Philadelphia. Since their undergraduate studies in community-based oral history, they seek to link embodied storytelling with metalsmithing, using jewelry as a worn archive, and teaching in accessible art education.
“I like to play with how objects are made, found, and remade. Through found object assemblages I seek to make-tangible the paradoxes within girlhood and queerhood, looking at performance and care as acts of rupture. Jewelry making provides me with an opportunity to re-write what is precious enough to wear as an extension of the body, and in doing so, create artifacts from an imagined future on the horizon.”
“When I use unconventional materials such as plastic, bone, or steel, I am forced to work with generative constraints to metalsmithing processes. I like experimenting with what technical rules I can negotiate with. And by recontextualizing found objects in metal, I hope to disrupt the social expectations projected on objects and bodies. A mass-produced dollar store plastic rhinestone gets remade as I create a brooch to set it in. The rhinestone’s conventional associations are rendered visible because it is in a new context that re-envisions the typical role of a plastic rhinestone as infantile or low value. I want to mirror how gendered expectations are projected onto bodies, and explore the agentic possibilities to retell, reappropriate, or make irrelevant those expectations through self-told stories expressing identity. I want to make objects that simultaneously tell stories that bring me back to my body and act as bodily signage, and ‘bootleg’ materials dance with, through, and beyond that binary."
What does being queer mean to you in relation to your material choices? Is it something you consider?
"Welcome to my Castle, Spin my Spur", Indigo-dyed deer vertebrae, fishing line, copper, stainless steel, 3.5" x 3" x 1", 2023
Is the work queer because the maker is queer, or is it queer because the subject matter is queer?
“The work is queer because I am but also because of how the work subverts linear time. This work came out of a few turbulent months that gave me a lot of time to make things. In particular I found a deer ribcage on a forest floor and then committed to cleaning it on a weekly basis in my backyard. I habitually scrubbed and soaked the fatty tissue off these bones, without a goal in mind. Having to be patient made me think in bone time, as I helped along the process of decay so the bones could be transformed once more. I eventually dipped one of the vertebrae into an indigo vat, carved it, and set it like a gemstone.
This time felt like a transformative rupture, and it was shaped by the ever-presence that queer friendship has taught me. Caring for the bones came out of grieving, which came out of loving. This made me want to make objects that capture the fleeting actions of rupture: a bone breaking, a spur spinning, wings flapping, a playing card in play."
"I am the player I am the card game I am the soft rabbit at stake", Mild steel and plastic rhinestones, 8" x 5" x .5", 2023
Anything else you would like to share about this work? This can be an important part of the process, sourcing materials, or research.
“I wanted to include an excerpt from the queer fable/manifesto The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell. I find this book deeply informative, and it was aptly shown to me by queer friends—I recommend others check it out too.”
"Heavenly Blue worried all the time... His worrying got the bills paid and the roof fixed and drove the men away and calmed the neighbors down and helped Hollyhock be happier. And finally his worrying drove him mad. It was the madness of looking inward and being afraid. There had never been enough love and warmth around him and he thought he had gradually dried up inside. He wanted out but he did not know where out was.
Lilac and Pinetree and Moonbeam and Loose Tomato and Hollyhock gathered. They held Heavenly Blue in their arms for days, they let him cry and stare and slobber and scream and be silent. They paid the bills and looked after the roof and watched the street for strange men and talked to the neighbors and Hollyhock kept himself happy. Their house filled up with comfort and routine and gladness until Heavenly Blue could no longer resist and became response-able again” (p.80).
