Join us for the opening reception of chewing on the wires by jewelarae and ArtLab youth
About the Artists:
Jewelarae (b. 2001) is a fourth-generation Coloradan growing mutant objects that play with gender and sexuality. They are an artist, jeweler, and designer exploring queer theory and industrial spirituality, with work that lives in, on, and around the body.
Rae’s practice treats information and knowledge systems as material—something to cut, solder, splice, and reconfigure. Through these objects, they examine how bodies and technologies shape one another, and how making can open new ways of being within—and against, beyond, and underneath—these systems.
Rae holds a BS in industrial design with minors in sexualities and jewelry. They have exhibited their work across the US, the EU, and Colombia, at Munich jewelry week, NYC jewelry week, ARTBO, and in print media. They were a finalist in the third cycle of current obsession’s GEMZ talent acceleration program and are currently an organizer of DUNG30Ndwellercult—a curatorial project pushing boundaries and building community across art and craft disciplines.
ArtLab youth are a group of 42 high school students from across the Denver metro area taking part in PlatteForum’s ArtLab Internship program. These youth are talented visual artists who are interested in sharing their voices, pushing their work in new directions, and engaging with the issues that matter most to them and their communities. Together with the Resident Artist, ArtLab youth interns create dynamic new works for each exhibition, experimenting with diverse media, sharing their stories, and working together to use arts for social change.
About the exhibition:
cables hum and machines sing, drowning out other voices. money, messages, commands, desires, questions course through the wires. these machines are insatiable, drinking the water endlessly, thirsty from calculations, their sparks contained inside tentacles—a sea of comings and goings.
chewing on the wires is a jewelarae and ArtLab youth exhibition featuring conceptual sculptures and wearable artworks. this exhibition explores the physical infrastructures sustaining digital realms, tracing synthetic intimacies and machine mysticisms through objects that blur the boundaries between technology and the body. technomaterial—discarded electronic relics, decommissioned hard drives, scrapped conduit pipe, rock samples from abandoned mines, fragments from derelict buildings, reclaimed metal—are reconfigured to trace material memory, sedimentation, and residues left on skin.
chunks of rock intersect machined aluminum, cast pewter, and silver to conjure an eerie kinship with machines and their infrastructures: these discarded objects are transformed into mutants—no longer entirely debris, tool, machine, jewelry, or body but some type of ever-evolving hybrid.
the work imagines machines and materials as beings with appetites, memories, and relationships. it is silly to think that the apex of sentience is human. industrial infrastructures—wires and cables—are things extracted and processed: intensely transformed nature, disconnected from their origins but not severed from their spirits.
to play with jewelry means working in radical proximity: direct contact with skin that embeds an object into lived experience. precise boundaries become less certain, more difficult to locate. machine debris moves inside our flesh as our flesh rests on machine parts. dead skin cells catch between surfaces; microplastics swirl inside veins. the work sits somewhere in between, making it difficult to determine where one material body gives way to another.
RSVP for the event here (optional but helpful!).
Accessiblity and Parking:
PlatteForum's Address: 910 Galapago Street, Suite C, Denver CO 80204
Street Parking: There is lots of street parking around the neighborhood. Keep in mind, street parking fills up on First Fridays.
Lot Parking: There are a few paid lots around the neighborhood. West High School usually offers a paid parking lot during First Fridays. This lot is directly adjacent to PlatteForum.
Public Transportation / Biking: PlatteForum is a 7 minute walk from the Kalamath Street & 10th Avenue bus stop, and a 15-minute walk from the 10th & Osage light rail station. Bike racks available on site on the west side of the building.
Accessibility: PlatteForum has reserved one accessible parking space on the east side of the building (marked with a cone). There is also a ramp with a handrail from the east side of the building to PlatteForum's door on the 2nd level. Once inside, you can move throughout PlatteForum's spaces and to the restroom without steps. One restroom is ADA accessible. Please let us know if you have any accessibility requests or questions. Contact: info@platteforum.org, 303-893-0791.