Beautiful Beast

When I was a child I observed with placid terror how spiders manipulated their prey. A ritual as relentless as refined that I have tried to reproduce in a piece of jewelry. Normally jewels are kind objects, but in this case they have a different role; it is something dangerous to be handled with great care. It is a golden spider with 8 very sharp flexible legs. A temporal piercing which incorporates pain as an unavoidable aspect of the jewel. The process of fastening is almost surgical, the skin is disinfected, it is applied and it is removed with a small mechanical artefact. The process is not free of danger and pain. Beauty hurts and requires an act of bravery and submission. The jewel possesses and controls you as the spider with its prey.

Repulsion and fascination, the insects have exercised a strange fascination in the jewelers of all the epochs.

Designed by Martín Azúa and made by the jeweler Roc Majoral / Majoral.

ARTJECTS / Sala Vinçon / Barcelona / From July 8th to August 8th, 2014.

“ Escultura timida”. Dialogue between traditional and contemporary jewellery, Museo del Traje, Madrid 2024.

Beautiful Beast is part of the collection Barcelona Design Museum.