On performing art jewellery: identity play as leisure activity

Abstract

Although the wearer is central to the understanding of jewellery of all kinds, the ways in which art jewellery is consumed as a leisure activity has received little critical attention. This paper seeks to situate the socially meaningful practices of art jewellery, with reference to social psychology [Markus, H. R., and S. Kitayama. 1999. “Culture and Self: Implications for Cognition, Emotion and Motivation.” In The Self in Social Psychology, edited by R. F. Baumeister ] and the sociology of Giddens [1991. Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press] and Goffman [[1959] 1990. The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin Books], as well as Butler's [[1990] 2006. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Abingdon: Routledge Classics] concept of performativity, in order to explore how jewellery is used to articulate aspects of the self. The paper draws on a small-scale primary research project, in which participants – new to this kind of adornment – wore, discussed and responded to both their own precious, traditional jewellery and a range of pieces of art jewellery. Whereas discussion of the participants’ own jewellery illustrates how it serves to lock them into place within their network of family and friends, their experiences of engaging with the art jewellery exemplifies their status as autonomous, bounded individuals. Trying on and responding to the art jewellery serves as a kind of identity play, extending the range of embodied practices available to the participants and allowing them to engage with non-normative performances of the self. This suggests that wearing art jewellery may serve as a form of performative leisure, disrupting the range of corporeal experiences open to women and creating the potential for change. The novelty of this approach stems from interrogating data derived from creative research methods using a conceptual framework that examines the mechanisms by which the self is constituted, establishing this as a new contribution to the fields of both leisure research and art jewellery.

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