Amelia Toelke

Ornament is far from supplemental. We adorn ourselves, our spaces, our lives to communicate who we are. As our personal, portable signage, jewelry informs, simultaneously expressing who we are and who we want to be. It reveals not only our aesthetic tastes but also performs complex social functions like indicating marriage status, our religious views, our values, or our wealth. This innate human impulse to adorn frames how I understand the world, our past and our present. In my work, I borrow and re-mix the symbols and motifs inherent to adornment and signage, building a visual language that explores the profound relationship between identity, culture, and ornament. In doing so, I highlight the deep connection between jewelry and those who wear it, showing how we use objects to tell stories about ourselves.