The work by young artists Jorge Oliva (Havana 1979) rises with a voice of its own among uneven conceptual lines in Cuban contemporary silversmithing.
His pieces, made out of silver and cooper, make us think of a spider because he knits with thin metal threads several shapes that make up bracelets, earrings, rings and all kinds of jewelry. His exquisite and original designs can change the opinion of those who think that silversmithing is not art.
His pieces are adorned with precious and semiprecious gems. At first glance its work seems made with engraved threads or careful and subtle nets, mostly with silver 999, almost pureso it is more malleable when knitting. His hand skills when handling small pieces allows him moving at ease in bigger formats and his sculptures are praiseworthy and popular given their originality.
Just as it has been with other artistic expressions throughout history, when observing Oliva’s work spectators realize that there is a lot of Cuban and foreign influences from any period, which has allowed him to consolidate his style and find his own code materialized in unique and valuable pieces.
The filigrees he accomplishes remind us of those made thousand years ago by the Etruscans, Greeks and Egyptians and medieval craftsmen. His aesthetic conception is immersed in the study of shapes; there are pieces in which volume and depth take over the interpretation of the piece.
However, it lacks antecedents in our environment, provided scarcity and abandonment of genuine and autochthonous crafts and saturation of an art that lacks patrimonial and aesthetic grips incapable of producing perdurable works.
Self-taught, he began his first works in 1988 by making tridimensional figures with cooper (out of discarded telephone lines and electric wires) and occasionally also with recycled silver. He named his technique Aracne as it resembles the work of arachnids when knitting their webs. At first, he dealt with prehistoric fauna and mythological figures in his pieces. In 1994 he started to work with uncovered wire and introduced human figures and religious topics (images from the old and the New Testament) and included real scenes and characters. Then, in 1997, he graduated from the “Pablo de la Torriente Brau” Construction and Craftwork Institute in craftwork and after that he majored from Plastic Arts at the Humanities Faculty from the Enrique José Varona Pedagogical Institute.
He is a member of the Cuban Association of Craftsmen and Artists (ACAA by its acronym in Spanish) and has received important awards during his career as for instance, UNESCO’s Award at FIART’97; an award at the Crib Exhibit, representing Cuba in the Vatican (2000); the “Manos” award for his contribution to national culture and a Master Award in 2007. His work is permanently exhibited in several places in Cuba and the world, and is also part of different private and institutional collections.
Author
Cecilia Crespo
Intrigued by your work. I love the way the light influences the figures through the knitting in the metal
Was just in Cuba and saw a couple of pieces at La California.