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Mimata: the creative effort of Joana Mieiro

Luxury is a contextual, sociological and historically enabled issue. It assumes different shapes and manifestations, enrolling itself in different aspects of life. About a year ago, in an edition of the newspaper El País, it was argued that high-quality bread corresponds to a current luxury that everyone can have access to in a time of crisis. Sociologically speaking, luxury is something that we allow ourselves to attain because it has a high standard of quality compared to common places, however it doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive. It holds a form of distinction close to the one approached by Pierre Bourdieu in La Distinction, critique sociale du jugement (1979). It’s a social theory on the taste associated with lifestyles. Hence, and on another social and economic platform, luxury can enroll itself e.g. in cuisine and catering, in several types of sports, in the purchase of high-end cars, of art pieces and jewels. Regarding jewelry, we associate luxury with gold, platinum and the so-called gems. That’s what we’ll attest through the Mimata brand.

Joana Mieiro opened the Mimata space in 2013. It’s located in the city of Oporto, in Rua da Cedofeita. The brand was sketched beforehand. It was, as she cleanly and humorously puts, an itinerant space, through which she established contacts between projects, execution of pieces and promotion. Now, being a young brand focused on jewelry, it already stands out do its morphological difference.

Joana Mieiro studied architecture at Escola Superior Artística do Porto, and design at Universidade de Aveiro. That was when her inclination towards jewelry started to sprout. She completed a post-graduation in Jewelry Design at Universidade Católica do Porto. There she studied this field’s theory and project, as well as technical aspects that support the execution of jewelry pieces. In 2011, she went to Milan with a scholarship to attend the study program held by Creative Academy, the school created by the Grupo Richemont, finishing the program with an internship in the iconic luxury watch brand Jaeger LeCoultre.

It should be stressed as well what she also learned about Peter Behrens, from Bauhaus to Dieter Rams, as pioneers of the profession of a designer, something that was consummated at the German school of Ulm. With such, the design’s morphological clarity would end up addressing the responsibility of a designer who, back then, didn’t assume an authorial stance yet.

The contemporary word has two meanings. On one hand, it indicates someone or something, as forms of design, that simultaneously exists within us or that coexists and makes sense in a specific context. On the other, contemporary art permanently breaks with tradition, as Walter Benjamin used to say. Among such forms one can find the so-called contemporary jewelry, which has an artistic nature. These pieces have symbolic senses embedded and transfigure means into symbolic contents which communicate with us through unexpected manners. It’s not easy to understand it without taking into account the identifications and intentions of each jeweler. That is also what we are going to hear from Joana Mieiro.

Ana Campos – Where do you place what you create for Mimata, in art or design?

Joana Mieiro – In design. But the boundaries between art and design become more and more blurred every day. Making a clear distinction between the two is not easy. For me, design is associated with the way that I’ve chosen to conceive a project. It interconnects the design of the pieces, which combines with its execution, and the communication design. The latter partitions itself, as the jewel is a mean to communicate what we want it to be. It associates itself with the Mimata project through a communicative image and the interior space. It also has to do with the way I want to communicate through the website, through photography, catalogs and/or through the pieces’ packages. That design degree in Aveiro helped me to apprehend these aspects, since it cuts across design in its lato sensu. Nonetheless, reading an image demanded a wider vocabulary later on.

AC – There’s a typical question that is always asked in situations like these: where do you find inspiration and what influences your work?

JM – I’m very land-related. My grandmother throws me back to spaces of her garden and nature. Those end up influencing my projects. The pieces are associated with the land, but also with stars, with the moon, the sun… My mother was the one who created the name of this brand. Mimata comes from mimo (gift). It’s something that we give to ourselves or to someone whom we want to conquer. My whole family collaborates directly with the Mimata project. My father encourages me and is still collaborating with me up to this day. My mother is fond of architecture and is an art collector, so to speak. Both are doctors, but there are some architectures in the family. Domingos Júnior, one of the professors at ESAP, is still an influence given the way he prompted us to discover, to think for ourselves and to carve our own path, being of the opinion that our questions are already a hint about what we are focused on. Actually, this matches, for the most part, my father’s stance. He prompts us to be aware of ourselves.

AC – The design of the pieces, presented by Mimata, stands out due to its morphological difference in relation to other international brands. In my opinion, you can literally find architectural aspects in some of them. There are constructions with structuring axes, those with a sort of lattice, sometimes you can find filigree and in others the work is more open; there is also a stone design which allows transparencies, as if they were skylights. The visibility per se, between the inside and the outside, is mingled to the point where it discloses several surprises. Do you agree?

JM – There are collections in which that aspect is more discernible. Particularly in the Moon pieces, their stones also allow transparencies from the outside to the inside. In certain cases, they are rooted in polished metal sheets – gold or silver – which is an old technique that enhances luminosity, brightness and transparency. In the Rome pieces, a star that is not particularly geometric works as a rosacea associated with a smoked quartz. The Rome ring allows a visibility between the inside and the outside or the other way round also.

Aspects like these are what make your pieces intriguing and lasting in terms of observation! Looking at a Mimata piece is a process that can only be completed after turning it in different directions.

Ana Campos was born in Porto, Portugal, in 1953. She is a jeweler and is also dedicated to research in this area. In the field of teaching, she taught design and theories of the art and design of contemporary jewelery. Until 2013, she was director of the arts / jewelery business and coordinator of the post-graduation in jewelery design at ESAD - School of Arts and Design, in Matosinhos, Portugal. It has been dedicated to curating and producing national and international jewelery exhibitions. Graduated in Communication Design at FBAUP. He studied jewelery at Ar.Co, Lisbon and at the Massana School, Barcelona, ​​as a scholarship holder at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. He holds a postgraduate degree in Intercultural Relations from Universidade Aberta, Porto, which led to a masters degree in Visual Anthropology, whose dissertation is entitled "Cel i Mar: Ramón Puig, actor in a new jewelery scene". The orientation was by José Ribeiro. She is currently a PhD in philosophy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He finished his PhD in 2014, with the guidance of Gerard Vilar. He developed a thesis entitled: "Contemporary jewelry as art: a philosophical study".

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