Jewelry Hunting is a project in which people discover the accidental effect of light in everyday scenes, project it onto the surface of the body and wear it as ‘jewellery’.The ‘jewellery’ is recorded by the hunter according to the conditions under which it appears (date, time, location, weather, etc.) and this information can be shared with others. By visiting the site according to the conditions, the visitor can actually wear the ‘jewellery’ and visually relive the sensation of owning it. Later, the experiencer will find their own perspective has changed, as their eyes are drawn to the effects of light that they find beautiful themselves in their daily lives.The ‘jewellery’ is not inherent in materials, but in the effects of light and the instructions about how to wear it. Owning ‘jewellery’ that only exists for a moment under certain conditions brings a sense of joy and elation, as only the owner can sense the existence of ‘jewellery’. The essential action of the project is to question accepted ideas of beauty and the value of ownership through the experience of hunting ‘jewellery’, and to rediscover one’s own value.

The project has been developed in various formats since its launch in 2011. In the newly launched ‘Book’, readers will be able to relive a psychological transformation: how the idea of Jewelry Hunting affected the participants, through photographs and text.
Eylül Aslan, a photographer from Istanbul, and Miyuki Hosoya, a translator/writer working in Japan, describe their experiences in photographs and text respectively. The reason for commissioning them is the approximation of the social status of women in Japan and Turkey: both have lived as women in a society where gender inequalities still remain strong, with Turkey ranked 130th and Japan 121st in the 2020 Gender Gap Index.
I hope that by reliving the experiences of those two contributors, readers will have the opportunity to reclaim their own values, and that this will lead to a little enrichment in their daily lives. I anticipate that by sharing their own experiences and feelings with those around them, and increasing the number of occasions for discussion, the issue of how “we internalise conventions handed down by history and culture” (quoted in Hosoya’s text) will be raised more and more.

Contributors

Eylül Aslan
A photography artist. Born in 1990 and raised in Istanbul, Turkey, where she went on to study French Language and Literature at Istanbul University, Aslan eventually moved to Berlin, Germany. After 6 years, she moved to Vienna where she continues to live and work.
As she moves back and forth between different cities, she finds beautiful scenery happening around her body as a woman, and expresses the joy of encountering it in her photographic works. She questions her way of life as a woman in the male dominated society of Turkey, proposing herself as an unrestricted individual and trying to subvert pre-existing concepts of sexual morality. Aslan reviews the female body — which has been covered by veils and is only allowed to be seen by the man who “owns” the woman — through the perspective of the woman who is actually the body’s true owner. She celebrates the joy and the importance of viewing the world with one’s own perspective.

Miyuki Hosoya
Born in 1978. She is a translator, writer and word-related professional. With a philosophical background from her university studies, she continues to try to translate her experiences into language. In recent years she has been involved in several self-help groups and organisations for people with the same or similar identities. She is currently interested in the relationship between the language of “I” and the language of “we”.

Naoko Ogawa
Born 1979. Jewellery artist. Lives and works in Berlin.
‘What can be a jewellery?’ Based on personal experience rather than contemporary values, she carefully studies what people find joyful and beautiful, and creates jewellery as a device to experience this elevation of the mind.
In 2011, she launched an art project Jewelry Hunting, a collection of “light jewellery” that she has been photographing and documenting since she moved to Germany in 2006. She has been presenting this project in various forms.