SONHOS: a project by Rafa G. Artiles. Design, craftsmanship and new technologies in high-end Canarian costume jewelry
”Only two things I was good at as a child, free and plastic writing, well, and disassembling and assembling toys and various junk, in everything else I was a disaster, due to my inability to memorize and my ability to daydream. Perhaps for this reason, instead of being a scientist or an engineer, I am an interdisciplinary creative.
My training and my working life have taken me from the audiovisual and photography, through the plastic arts, to editorial design. Always with a clear intention to tell stories and turn them into objects”, tells us the multidisciplinary creative Rafa G. Artiles.
Rafa is a native of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, awarded two years ago at the Fundación Mapfre Guanarteme entrepreneurship awards for SONHOS, a craft and design project focused mainly on the design and artisan production of high-end jewelry using 3D printing, combined with other artisan techniques.
He conceives his creations as small reliquaries capable of containing stories, which is why he works on them from their symbolic level and gives them the ability to store content through USB flash drives or NFC (contactless) technology. This combination of iconicity and technology endows his pieces with a marked retro-futuristic style.
”During a long stay in Mexico I discovered the power and value of pre-Hispanic graphic language, and immediately the Canarian pintaderas came to mind, and the little we know about them. At that point I decided that I had to incorporate sign making into my work.”
His first two series of objects are two collections of fine jewelry, IQ, inspired by a series of stories he wrote, and the Trilogía Antropófaga, inspired by the homonymous work by choreographer and body artist Mariana de Paula Ferreira (Cia. Maripaula). He is currently in the research phase for a new collection inspired by endemic Canary Islands.
WHY SOHOS?
On the one hand, it has to do with an intimate connection I have with Brazil, and on the other hand, with the fact that many of my stories develop like a dream, where, for better or worse, anything is possible, and it is the subconscious that sets the stage path.
In the elaboration of the pieces a material called PLA is used. It is a bioplastic that comes from vegetable starches and that is compostable under the right conditions. This, together with a form of production with a very low carbon footprint and that allows production from one piece, give this project a certain sustainability character..
He currently develops his work in the Cero Fanzine creation space, where it is possible to visit him and see his work as a multidisciplinary creative.
Instagram @sonhoscreaciones and @pajarossobrelacabeza
