Jewelry as a means of transformation and returning to oneself

Since the times of the first civilizations, jewelry has been much more than an object meant for mere decoration. While it adorns our faces and bodies with its beauty, jewelry is often intertwined with symbolism, energy, and meaning that go beyond ourselves. It holds our stories, emotions, and memories, and often also the stories, emotions, and memories of those who were here before us and those who will come after us. The weight and lightness of this flow of time contained in a single object, interwoven with lives, is one of the reasons why jewelry is so magical. Such is the jewelry of Jovana Djuric. Magical. With stunning sculptural forms, stripped of anything unnecessary, it is both contemporary and somehow primal, as if we cannot define its time or place. The epithet that would suit it best is, in fact – timeless.

“My jewelry always communicates with the body and gives it a new, extended dimension. I want those who wear it to feel a deeper connection with their hands, with their essential nature. I want to remove everything that is not essential. For me, jewelry has an extended connection with the body, and I want that connection to be even more conscious,” says the designer, whose love for jewelry grew out of her love for sculpture. Today, she finds countless similarities and a few differences between the two, but what draws her to both sculpture and jewelry is the connection with her own body, the meditative process of working with her hands, and the beauty of being in the present moment. But let’s go back to the beginning.

After studying sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Djuric moved to New York in search of new opportunities. She arrived in the city that never sleeps with “just 50 German marks given to her by a friend,” and after two years of living in New York, she enrolled in jewelry design at the prestigious Fashion Institute of Technology. “What led me to start designing jewelry was my fascination with metals and the process of transformation that metal undergoes when we shape it into jewelry, from its interaction with fire to its interaction with the hammer…” explains the designer, whose career immediately had a great start. In her first year of studies, she started working on a project for Tiffany & Co., and also made jewelry for the then-famous American designer Alice Roi. However, she is not interested in jewelry as a “fashion item whose purpose is decoration” – what interests her is exploration, transformation, and the alchemical side of it.

Before starting her own brand in 2014, she worked as a jewelry designer for the fashion house Givenchy, as well as for the American designer and sculptor Robert Lee Morris, known for his organic forms and futuristic creations, and considered one of the pioneers in understanding jewelry as an art form. But, as it often happens, her brand is a reflection of what she has always wanted to create. The Horus ring, which irresistibly resembles a bird’s claw, is one of her most recognizable creations. No matter what form her creations ultimately take, they are always rooted in the same philosophy, in the connection with herself, the beauty of creation, and the union with tools, techniques, and materials that have been around since ancient times in our history, in the search for and connection with something primal. That is one of the reasons why Jovana experiences the process as so liberating and so spiritual, adding that her upbringing in the Balkans had a significant influence on her work and worldview, which she uncompromisingly intertwines into her creations – from the starkness of brutalist sculpture to the connection with nature, to the music that intertwines passion, pain, and love, reflecting our life energy. “For me, my work in jewelry is a path to awakening my expanded consciousness and connection with what came before me,” she says. However, even though she perceives her jewelry, as she says, not as decoration but as a symbol of transformation and returning to oneself, she is aware that the women who wear it have their own connection with it and find in it what they need at that moment. And that is precisely what gives it special value.

The designer, who moved to the picturesque Tulum in Mexico in 2021, now plans to return to Los Angeles. In the City of Angels, she collaborates with the prominent boutique Maxfield, an oasis of designer fashion and art, works on her own collections, expands her brand offerings, and returns to sculpture. “For me, sculpture is something very intimate and personal. The physicality of the work is what makes me feel alive, allowing me to feel fully present in my body,” she tells me in conclusion. Feeling alive, present in one’s body is where the magic truly lies.