Elena Syraka, the cosmopolitan Greek jewelry designer, presented her latest collection “Nafs” in i-D Concept Stores in Kolonaki, Athens.
With the i-Dentities series of events, i-D Concept Stores promote, display and bring in touch with the general public, contemporary Greek creators and artists who leave an intense mark on the world of jewellery, art and fashion.
In this context, the international jewellery designer Elena Syraka presented her new collection Nafs on Thursday June 8, 2017.
Nafs – meaning soul in Arabic – is the natural evolution of the museum jewellery collection Nour by the well-known designer, inspired by the exhibits of the Museum of Islamic art of the Benaki Museum.
Elena Syraka’s jewellery pieces are not just decorative. They are sculpted statements of the meeting between the peoples and the civilizations in the cradle of their birth, the Eastern Mediterranean. They are timeless, old and contemporary. In order to design them the artist had to bend respectfully on the material remains of the Islamic civilization, as they are exhibited in the Museum of Islamic art of the Benaki Museum and she created her own historic artistic narrative. She isolated plant motives and geometric shapes from silk fabrics and glassware. She was inspired by the armors, the helmets and the swords, the weaponry which stated not only military valor and excellence, but also the God-given mission of the army. She studied the miniatures in manuscripts and Arabic script which she conceived and presented as autonomous compositions with her austere and intensely expressive visual vocabulary. She gave a new aspect to form, minimizing it through abstract condensation. With contemporary aesthetics she brought forward the timeless substance, the meaning and not the form of tradition.
The decorative detail in the work of Syraka becomes the aesthetic “whole”.
Pieces of jewellery – works of art, made of gold, with diamonds, sapphires and amethysts.
The collections Nafs and Nour are presented in the i-D Concept Store in Kolonaki, Kanari 12, and online
For more of Elena Syraka’s jewelry click here.