{"id":186504,"date":"2025-11-18T04:49:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T04:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/186504\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T04:49:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T04:49:15","slug":"exhibition-by-singer-songwriter-jewel-will-travel-to-venice-biennale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/186504\/","title":{"rendered":"Exhibition by Singer-Songwriter Jewel Will Travel to Venice Biennale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDuring the upcoming Venice Biennale, Crystal Bridges<\/a> Museum will stage an exhibition dedicated to the art singer-songwriter Jewel<\/a> at the Salone Verde, a venue that\u2019s a short walk from the Fondazione Prada. The exhibition, running May 10 through November 22, will be organized by Crystal Bridges curator-at-large Joe Thompson.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe exhibition, titled \u201cMatriclysm: An Archeology of Connections Lost,\u201d takes as its theme \u201cfeminine memory [and] the mythology of feminine power,\u201d Jewel told ARTnews in a recent interview; the title is a portmanteau of the words \u201cmatriarchy\u201d and \u201ccataclysm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\n\tShe continued, \u201cIt explores cataclysmic events to matriarchy. I define feminine energy as the urge to connect and nurture, which everybody exhibits. If we disconnect from feminine energy, we lose the ability to connect deeply to ourselves in a meaningful way. We lose the ability to really nurture ourselves in a healthy way. We lose community because we lose the ability to connect to one another and nurture one another. I see it as a great illness in society that we\u2019ve wanted to just disassociate from the feminine principles so thoroughly and divorce ourselves of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMatriclysm\u201d will feature paintings, a tapestry, and sculptures that carry a sonic component. The paintings that will be on view come from a body of work titled \u201cCeremony,\u201d which Jewel described as being \u201cabout matriarchs and women in menopause,\u201d noting that humans are one of few species that experience menopause. The portraits in the series, which have a surrealist inflection, imagine what Jewel\u2019s \u201cmatrilineal lineage looks like backward and forwards through time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cScientists think that menopause evolved biologically so that women would come offline reproductively, so that they could focus on teaching,\u201d she said. \u201cThe series explores women as teachers, as well as feminine memory and feminine erasure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJewel, Nepo Baby, from the series \u201cCeremony.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy the artist and Crystal Bridges<\/p>\n

\n\tThree large-scale sculptures will also feature in the exhibition that \u201crepresent undiluted feminine power\u201d and carry the titles First Mother, Seven Sisters, and Heart of the Ocean. First Mother, made in collaboration with sculptor Patrick Bongoy, will resemble a pregnant kneeling woman and will be displayed outdoors. Seven Sisters takes its name from the Pleiades cluster, named for the sister-nymphs in Greek mythology. Heart of the Ocean, which measures eight feet tall, \u201crepresents the ocean being the womb, the wellspring of all living souls on earth,\u201d Jewel said.<\/p>\n

\n\tJewel\u2019s interest in this idea of the ocean as womb comes from her childhood in Alaska, growing up surrounded by big nature. \u201cEven though I had a really difficult home life, because I had nature, I had such a visceral feeling of being supported, loved, and cared for,\u201d she said. \u201cI wanted to see if I could create a work that gave you that feeling that nature was reaching for you\u2014a mother that is always reaching, even though we\u2019re not always kind in return.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tInside Heart of the Ocean is a computer to which has been input a livestream of open source oceanic data from the Atlantic Ocean\u2014measuring wave height, precipitation, salinity, for example\u2014compiled with the help of scientists at NASA, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley. That data feeds into 60,000 points of programmable light that activate the sculpture. At one point, the sculpture will turn red for five seconds, based on the compression of 150 years of ocean warming data.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve always had a real fascination with science; I think if I wasn\u2019t a musician, I probably would have gone into the scientific field. When I was homeless, like I would read quantum physics and super string theory, and it just made me feel like anything is possible,\u201d Jewel said. \u201cI wanted to see, if I was really loyal to the mathematics of nature, could I give you a big nature experience on your nervous system while indoors?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAccompanying Heart of the Ocean is a soundscape that responds to a sound vocabulary created by Jewel. \u201cDepending on what the ocean is doing, it can play that vocabulary in different ways\u2014it\u2019s this very other worldly sonification of data,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe challenge with this was that this sonification produces something that is in fact atonal; the height of an ocean wave, for example, may resemble a wave but as the wave goes higher, the note goes lower.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou get more than one piece of data like that, and it starts sounding like a fax machine,\u201d she said. \u201cThe trick with Heart of the Ocean was figuring out how to be very loyal to the data but create a piece that was harmonic. Some of the ways that I used sound in sonifying data was to have it trigger a key change.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJewel creating an orb for the Seven Sisters sculpture at the glass-blowing studio at the Toledo Museum of Art.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto Ben Morales<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Seven Sisters sculpture is also accompanied by a soundscape of seven women singing; that data draws from open-source data from the Pleiades constellation. \u201cEach orb of light has its own voice, so this chorus of seven women singing will fill the space,\u201d she said. A third soundscape will feature a heartbeat and the sound of the breath in another room.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe tapestry on view will measure eight feet tall and is of a woman in a green business suit who is engulfed in flames. \u201cIt kind of defies one meaning, but I felt it was important to include tapestry because it\u2019s been traditionally thought of as woman\u2019s work,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tCrystal Bridges executive director Rod Bigelow said in a statement, \u201cAt Crystal Bridges, we are committed to lifting artists\u2019 voices and creating spaces where curiosity and exploration can flourish. \u2018Matriclysm\u2019 invites audiences to engage with urgent themes and discover new perspectives, sparking the kind of dialogue that deepens our connection to art and to one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Jewel<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJewel in the studio.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy the artist<\/p>\n

\n\tJewel studied drawing and sculpture, working in marble and clay, when she attended Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan for operatic singing. \u201cThen, my music career took off amazingly, and so I didn\u2019t do as much sculpture,\u201d she said. \u201cI was able to keep drawing throughout my career, but I just did it privately.\u201d More recently, she began painting.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2024, Crystal Bridges organized the exhibition \u201cThe Portal: An Art Experience by Jewel,\u201d billed as the artist\u2019s \u201cinaugural museum venture.\u201d That exhibition featured painting and sculpture, as well as a drone show that was set to a choreography and original score by Jewel.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe earlier exhibition, Jewel said, was about \u201cbringing together visual art and music and behavioral health and seeing if I could positively impact people\u2019s nervous systems by how I paced the show in the museum.\u201d That response in viewers, in which their brain waves are subtly altered, is what she terms \u201cneuro-ceutical.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI decided to take that further with this show,\u201d she said. The Heart of the Ocean sculpture, she said, can get visitors to a Theta brainwave state, which is often considered a state of deep relaxation while still awake, in 20 seconds.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s part of why Jewel wanted to bring this exhibition to the Venice Biennale. \u201cThe Biennale is amazing but very busy and hectic, and tiring and depleting,\u201d she said. \u201cI built this show to be a restorative counterpoint, where you can come into the cool, into the dark, and into a really reflective moment that hopefully will leave you feeling nurtured and replenished when you leave.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During the upcoming Venice Biennale, Crystal Bridges Museum will stage an exhibition dedicated to the art singer-songwriter Jewel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,104828,366,18,117,19,17,104829,95735],"class_list":{"0":"post-186504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-crystal-bridges","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-jewel","19":"tag-venice-biennale-2026"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115568900023351694","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}