Jewelry becomes immersive art at Acne Paper Palais Royal Gallery in Paris Digital art and high jewelry merge in "The Jewellery Box", an exhibition like no other

For her first solo exhibition, the artist Emman transforms the gallery Acne Paper Palais Royal into a unique and immersive installation: The Jewellery Box. Far from being a simple exhibition, it is a massive music box of jewelry that comes to life, complete with a dancing ballerina. The artist skillfully combines theatricality and intimacy, two-dimensional collages and scenography, creating a striking evocation of female rituals and inherited elegance. At the heart of the exhibition lies a personal mythology. Emman, the daughter of immigrants, draws her inspiration from her multicultural origins and orally transmitted stories. The Jewellery Box traces her journey, from childhood when she cut out jewelry from catalogs to keep them in a music box, to her apprenticeship as a jeweler under the guidance of her uncles. For her, jewelry is much more than a mere ornament. It is a symbol of protection, memory, desire, ritual, and identity. The exhibition reveals this vision through a glass showcase displaying a series of monumental trompe-l'œil collages, where high jewelry merges with natural elements and "cultural waste," abolishing the boundaries between precious and discarded, high and low.

The Jewellery Box also subtly interrogates the gender codes embedded in iconography. The ballerina, an emblematic figure of the 20th century, here serves as a metaphor for hyper-femininity and the demands of performance. In contrast, Emman’s collages suggest a more fluid and complex view of identity, where gender is conceived as adaptive and plural, reflecting the insects and other creatures depicted. These marine creatures, insects, and reptiles, with their glossy shells, reflect the shifting allure of high jewelry, evoking mimicry and seduction. The artist invites reflection on transformation and the adaptive nature of identity, much like in the animal world. The exhibition is not limited to physical collages. The artist HEY_REILLY, famous for his digital creations influenced by artificial intelligence, expands the exhibition’s dimension. He animates Emman’s two-dimensional jewelry over images of women from Hollywood’s golden age, creating a living assemblage of femininity, performance, and ornament. The Jewellery Box is a physical manifestation of Acne Paper, moving from the two-dimensional paper format to an embodied 3D and 4D experience. It is an invitation to enter a world of ornament and meaning, illusion and intimacy, where joy and "camp" aesthetics meet for a unique journey into the heart of creation.