"BEAUTY HAS A BLURRY DEFINITION"

—I make things and imagine worlds. Sometimes I write words.

Mariana Blanco is a Spanish artist based in Santander whose practice spans contemporary jewellery, objects and digital media. She is drawn to jewellery for its intimate relationship with the body and its capacity to carry memory, identity, and the values of its time. In an era marked by mobility, uncertainty, and increasingly limited personal space, she sees jewellery as an art form for a nomadic age: portable, personal, and capable of accompanying us through change.Her work often begins with questions and speculations. These enquiries have led her to explore the future of adornment, the possibility of digital preciousness, the ways humans navigate transition and loss, and how objects continue to outlive and reshape the contexts from which they emerge. Formally educated in Fine Arts in Spain and France, and later trained in jewellery making in Spain and Australia, Blanco approaches making through a Fine Arts lens, allowing concepts to guide form rather than the reverse.

SELECTED WORKS

— Welcome to my ‘Explorations’

NEW ARCHAEOLOGIES
'A generation of transition'

This work considers the material traces our era will leave behind. Inspired by the mystery of archaeological tools and artefacts—objects whose original meanings are often lost to time—it presents the imprint of a mobile phone circuit board, one of the defining technologies of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Cast in plaster and resting on an aluminium base, the board appears as an archaeological fragment: a relic of a generation suspended between analogue and digital worlds. Once hidden within everyday devices, these intricate electronic structures became the foundation of unprecedented social, cultural and technological change. The work invites viewers to imagine how future generations might interpret the remnants of our digital transition.

In Future Tense is an ongoing series investigating the future possibilities of jewellery through emerging technologies.

IN FUTURE TENSE 0002:CODING THE SKIN

IFT 0002, revisits a question first conceived in 2020, inspired by the widespread adoption of QR codes during the pandemic: Can jewellery be coded into the skin?The work explores this idea through two forms: an aluminium necklace that references jewellery's traditional role as an object worn on the body, and a temporary tattoo that imagines adornment as a second skin. Activated through Augmented Reality, both become gateways to a series of digital three-dimensional gems, inviting viewers to experience jewellery as something that exists simultaneously in physical and virtual space.Part of an ongoing investigation into the future of adornment, the project considers how jewellery might evolve beyond the material object and inhabit new digital dimensions. Conceived as a speculative prototype, Coding the Skin envisions a future in which jewellery integrates seamlessly with the body, blurring the boundaries between skin, technology, and ornament.

IFT0002 necklace displayed at Colour Stories exhibition, 2024
IFT0002 tattoo during Radiant Pavilion 2024, Melbourne, Australia

ga—IA

Conceived in early 2024, during a period marked by the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence into public consciousness, ga-IA responds to a cultural landscape shaped by uncertainty and technological anxiety. While much of the discourse surrounding AI focused on disruption, replacement, and existential risk, the project proposes an alternative future: one in which artificial intelligence becomes a mediator between humanity and the natural world.Set in April 2074, ga-IA imagines a near-utopian society where advances in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, genetic engineering, and interspecies communication have transformed humanity's relationship with its environment. Through collaboration with a superintelligent AI, humans develop adaptive mutations that enable them to thrive in extreme conditions, while new forms of knowledge reveal the interconnected languages of plants, animals, and ecosystems. Rather than dominating nature, humanity becomes its steward, using technology to foster biodiversity, ecological balance, and a deeper awareness of its place within a larger living whole.The collection is structured around two fictional personas, Dalia and Bits, who embody the duality of the organic and the artificial while reflecting the cyclical nature of history. Drawing inspiration from Art Nouveau and Art Deco, the designs create stylistic parallels between flowing floral forms and geometric, technology-inspired lines.

This project was developed for the second edition of Aristocrazy’s Talent Incubator, an initiative designed to connect emerging jewellery designers with the brand to foster innovation, strengthen its creative community, and inform the development of future collections. Selected in 2023 as one of ten designers from across Spain, I took part in the programme between January and May 2024, culminating in the presentation of my final proposal to a jury at Aristocrazy’s headquarters in Madrid.

In Future Tense is an ongoing series investigating the future possibilities of jewellery through emerging technologies.

IN FUTURE TENSE 0001
'A piece that explores how to wear digital’

Building upon saudade.world—a digital project where visitors exchanged memories for digital pearls—the work investigates how an intangible jewel might acquire a physical presence. Using a contemporary adaptation of the nineteenth-century Pepper's Ghost illusion, a digital pearl appears suspended in space as a holographic apparition.Initially conceived as a wearable brooch, the project evolved through experimentation. The technical requirements of the holographic system revealed both the limitations of wearability and the illusion's dependence on darkness, ultimately transforming the work into an object-machine. Encased within an aluminium chassis, the holographic pearl becomes the focal point of a sculptural device that exists at the intersection of jewellery, technology, and installation.By treating the physical structure as a support for the immaterial jewel, the work asks whether a digital object can acquire the qualities traditionally associated with preciousness.

IFT0001 hologram

Images a and b by Henry Trumble. Video: The breathing pearl aka the hologram.

(A)luminium

This brooch emerged from an exploration of form through folding as its sole construction method, entirely free of soldering. Made from aluminium—a material chosen for its lightness, infinite recyclability, and the subtle beauty of its blue-grey sheen—the piece evokes an industrial and architectural aesthetic, resembling a wall fragment translated onto the body. In contrast to its outward appearance, the fastening mechanism conceals a pair of pearls on the reverse side, where they finish the pin stems. By concealing this precious element on the reverse, the piece questions conventional notions of preciousness and suggests that what is most meaningful is not always immediately visible.

(A) poem

An ongoing body of work exploring the relationship between jewellery and architecture through a series of small-scale sculptural forms. Created through intuitive carving, the pieces evoke architectural details, volumes, surfaces, and spatial gestures without referencing specific buildings.The title reflects both their scale and their nature. Like poems, the works are condensed forms—brief yet complete, capable of suggesting worlds beyond themselves. While some resemble fragments of architecture, each exists as an autonomous object, translating the language of the built environment into an intimate, wearable scale.Informed by a lifelong familiarity with architectural thinking, (A)-Poem explores the possibility of wearing architecture not as a building, but as a poetic encounter.

saudade.world

Created for the 2021 edition of Radiant Pavilion, Melbourne’s Contemporary Jewellery and Object Biennial, Saudade.world is a participatory digital project that explores love, loss, and memory in an increasingly virtual world. Conceived as an online archive of anonymous emotional histories, the website invited visitors to share a fragment of their love story in exchange for a piece of digital jewellery—an intangible jewel offered as a keepsake for a newly externalised memory.The project draws on jewellery's longstanding role as a vessel for remembrance, particularly within traditions of mourning jewellery, while questioning how these functions might evolve in the digital age. By exchanging personal memories for digital adornments, Saudade.world investigates whether virtual objects can acquire emotional weight, act as markers of absence, and carry the same capacity for attachment traditionally associated with physical jewellery.Initially conceived as a speculative experiment and a starting point for future research, the platform remained active between 2021 and 2024, gradually accumulating a collective archive of stories that transformed private experiences of love and grief into a shared digital memorial.

saudade living pearl

AMAZONA

AMAZONA is a series of six brooches conceived to be worn in pairs on the nipples. Referencing the multiple meanings of the word amazon—the mythical female warrior of antiquity, a woman of strength and determination, and the Greek etymological interpretation of a-mastos ("without breast")—the project explores the shifting symbolism of the female breast throughout Western history.Conceived amid ongoing debates surrounding the visibility and censorship of female bodies, AMAZONA responds to the disproportionate attention directed at the female nipple. Frustrated by the social codes governing its display, the project proposes a simple reversal: bringing attention to what is usually concealed. Inspired by the logic of nipple piercings, the brooches are worn on clothing directly over the nipples, marking their presence and transforming an ordinarily hidden feature into a deliberate public statement.Through a deliberately simple and austere formal language, the pieces establish a dialogue with the body and acquire their full meaning only when worn. Their anatomical placement is central to the work, turning the breast into a site where cultural values, desires, fears, and ideologies become visible.Drawing on Marilyn Yalom's A History of the Breast, the collection is structured into three pairs of brooches—The Sacred and Nurturing Breast, The Erotic Breast, and The Diseased Breast. Together, they trace the changing meanings assigned to women's breasts across time, situating contemporary debates around representation and censorship within a much longer historical narrative.

Both photos are from the 2017 EA3 Graduation Show in Madrid: the project poster and the work on display.

Wing

Created during my first year of jewellery studies, Wing is a modelling exercise exploring relief sculpture and the translation of organic forms into metal. Inspired by avian anatomy, the piece focuses on volume, texture, and the subtle interplay of light across its surface.Before studying jewellery, I trained in a traditional Fine Arts faculty where observational drawing, painting and modelling formed a significant part of the curriculum. The bird relief shown below was created during that period and led one of my professors to encourage me to pursue jewellery studies. Looking back, these two works reveal a continuity between my early sculptural practice and my later exploration of jewellery as a medium.

CV

EDUCATION
2025—26, Master’s Degree in Design and Management of Cultural Spaces—Acciona x Shifta by Elisava, Spain
2021—23, Advanced Diploma of Jewellery and Object Design—Melbourne Polytechnic, Fairfield, VIC, Australia
2013—17, Advanced Diploma of Artistic Jewellery—Escuela de Arte 3, Madrid, Spain
2013—14, Graphic Design Diploma—ESDIP, Madrid, Spain
2008—13, Bachelor of Fine Art—Complutense University of Madrid, Spain / 2011—12, Erasmus. ESBAN, Nîmes, France
1996—2008, Elemental Dance Studies, Elemental Music Studies, Art School (Bachillerato)—Valladolid, Spain

AWARDS, GRANTS & RESIDENCIES
2025, Residency, Visual Arts — La Fábrica de Creación, Santander, Spain
2024, Talent Incubator — Aristocrazy, Madrid, Spain
2023, Future Leaders Award — Dr Helen Sykes AM, Future Leaders, Melbourne, Australia
2023, Fresh! Victorian Graduates’ Exhibition and Bursary— Craft Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
2021, Larsen Jewellery Scholarship — Larsen Jewellery, Sydney, Australia
2017, Best Final Projects Award— Escuela de Arte 3, Madrid, Spain
2015, Residency ‘Porcelain and paint applied to jewellery’ x Trinidad Contreras — T. Contreras Workshop, Barcelona, Spain
2009, CYL Young Artists Scholarship — Ávila, Spain

GROUP SHOWS
2026, Object Forward. A show about objects presented by NC(-A) — Blue Ballroom, Alcaston House. Melbourne, VIC, Australia
2024, Colour Stories x Radiant Pavilion—curated and hosted by Marcos Guzman, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
2023, Fresh!2023 — Craft Victoria, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
2023, Melt — Darebin Arts Centre, Preston, VIC, Australia
2022, Liminal — Melbourne Polytechnic, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
2021, saudade.world — Radiant Pavilion Biennial. Melbourne, VIC, Australia
2017, Escuela de Arte 3 Graduation Show: Jewellery, Enamel and Silversmithing — Madrid, Spain
2017, Quatre Claus — ESAD, Valencia, Spain
2016, Somos joyería III — Museo de Palencia, Palencia, Spain
2015, EA3 en la Facultad de Bellas Artes — Fine Arts, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain
2014, Art Schools — Museo del Traje, Madrid, Spain
2014, Runway EA10 y EA3 — Museo del Traje, Madrid, Spain
2014, Diálogos — National Museum of Decorative Arts, Madrid, Spain
2012, Expoerasmus — École Supérieure des Beaux-arts de Nîmes, Nîmes, France
2012, 12BIS. Outdoor installation & Church windows — Caiverac, Francia
2010, Debajo de los Secretos — El Cubo/Edificio Imagina, Alcobendas, Madrid, Spain

PUBLIC SPEAKING
2017, Escuela de Arte 3 Open Day, ‘Best Final Projects: Amazona’— Escuela de Arte 3, Madrid, Spain

SELECTED COURSES & WORKSHOPS
2026, 19-20 March, Curatorial workshop x Virginia Torrente — La Fábrica de Creación, Santander, Spain
2025, 3-4 November, ‘Formas biomórficas’ x Iria do Castelo — Programa Confluencias, Santander, Spain
2025, 7-8-9 March, ‘Additive wax modelling’ x Calixto Sánchez — Barbada Estudio, Madrid, Spain
2025, 23-24 April, Next In Summit — ACCIONA Living & Culture, Madrid, Spain
2020, Workshop ‘Forma y Materia’ x Jorge Manilla — Batek Jewellery School, México, Online
2020, History of Jewellery Design: 1800-now — Christie’s Education, Online
2015, Workshop ‘Sense the future’ x Tanel Veenre — Fabrika12, Valencia, Spain

RELATED PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2026, Workshop: ‘Laboratorio de celulosa para joyería’— ESAC Roberto Orallo, Cantabria, Spain
2025—26, Front of House — Centro Botín, Santander, Spain
2025, Intern at PEDRA Casa Estudi with Empar Juanes — Valencia, Spain
2024, Project Officer —Radiant Pavilion, Melbourne, Australia
2024, Assisted the Modern Design Specialist — Leonard Joel (Auction House), Melbourne, Australia
2023, Gallery Assistant & Content Creator — Gallery Funaki, Melbourne, Australia
2021, Intern — Radiant Pavilion, Melbourne, Australia
2018—24, Design Store — National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
2016—17, Design & Management — Private Atelier Apodemia, Madrid, Spain
2015—16, Gallery Assistant — Luis Burgos Gallery, Madrid, Spain
2013, Drawing Teacher — Montsequi Gallery, Madrid, Spain
2013, Children's Book illusration— Kuaderno, Madrid, Spain