| Pearl & Bone examines the superstitional tension between adornment and vulnerability—how objects worn close to the body carry both cultural meaning and emotional charge. In the upper monochrome section, an 18th-century portrait of a woman adorned with pearls is cropped to exclude her face. Pearls, long associated with purity and wealth, also carry superstitional weight: in some traditions, they symbolize tears, and gifting them is believed to invite sorrow. Her facelessness renders her symbolic—ornamented, anonymous, and emotionally withheld.
Beside her, Grace Kelly screams in a still from the 1953 film Mogambo. Her expression is raw and uncontained—a rupture of composure. In superstition, a scream can be seen as a release of spiritual tension, a warning, or even an omen. Her proximity to the pearl-clad figure creates a visual and emotional dissonance: beauty beside fear, ritual beside rupture.
To the right, a diagram of necklace lengths offers clinical precision—measuring intimacy in centimeters. It’s a map of adornment, but also of proximity and control. In superstitional logic, the placement of jewelry on the body can influence energy, fate, or protection. Below, three x-rays rendered in blue on black reveal fractured bones—literal breaks beneath symbolic surfaces. In some traditions, broken bones are seen as spiritual trials, physical manifestations of emotional or karmic imbalance.
Pearl & Bone stages these tensions. A canvas of symbolic fracture, where superstition lingers in the space between ornament and anatomy, beauty and trauma, ritual and rupture.
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