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Jewellery & Metal (MA)

Morvarid Alavifard

Born in Tehran, Morvarid Alavifard studied MA Jewellery and Metalwork at the RCA with the Behrense foundation bursary scholarship. She graduated with first-class honour with BA in Jewellery and Objects from Birmingham City University. And Her background is in architecture and music. 


By showing her work at Ain’t I Am Women exhibition in the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in 2019, she decided to continue her work related to encompassing social and cultural issues about her own experience of life. 

At the RCA, she is pursuing this direction, further concentrating on extending the potential for audience response to the pieces that she makes.


Degree Details

School of Arts & HumanitiesJewellery & Metal (MA)

Show Location: Battersea campus: Dyson & Woo Buildings, Third floor

Morvarid Alavifard-statement

Based on where you were born, and how you raise the material can have a different definition. But all materials can have conflicting meanings at the same time. 

In my language and in society I realise I kept being objectified especially through jewellery and gold, My research in RCA was to explore this definition through myself and put myself in a closer relationship with the object. as a maker view, I wanted to find a way to explore the definition of the material base on my experience.

I challenged myself by creating uncomfortable conflict in my work, in doing so risking my true self and personal freedom.


“When you’re an artist, you’re searching for freedom. You never find it because there ain't any freedom. But at least you search for it. In fact, art should be, could be called ‘the search’”

Alice Neel


My research focuses on freedom and breaking down boundaries and I enjoy the feeling of destroying and try to express this through material exploration. I set out to challenge conventional and traditional values and systems that affect me. From destruction comes freedom, reapportion and healing.

This research was divided into three subjects which they related to my relationship with gold and jewellery. In those three subjects, I research materiality and concept exploration.

Each subject follows the same theme gold, destruction, objectification, value, and power. 

  • I research gold and pearl in my identity and heritage, exploring how it is related to me.
  • I explore was gold in society. In the relation between gold and society, I explored the way of creating an objectification of our body with gold
  •  Gold as a material and what is the actual quality of the material.


I use my work to invite an audience to join me on this reflective journey, exploring themselves in a parallel experience.

Proccess
Proccess
Pearl (مروارید), media item 2
Pearl (مروارید), media item 3
Pearl (مروارید), media item 4
Pearl (مروارید), media item 5
Pearl (مروارید), media item 6
Pearl (مروارید), media item 7
Pearl (مروارید), media item 8

 Pearl being Valuable, being pure, being perfect, being in comfort, being ‘pearl’ * is something which has been pressured to me to be. The pressure that the value was in, gold and pearls could buy my power and freedom and give me safety.

This pressure gave away my freedom, gave away my power, gave away my value, objectified me and created pain. But where is my real freedom? Do I need to choose between my freedom and my safety? What shall I do with this conflict?

This pain has layers and layers and would never leave me, but if I leave it as it is. it was never repaired. This Repairing is by destruction. They might say destruction is the way of destroying or is the way of showing anger and hates or whatsoever and I agree but on a deep level, destruction is creation. Without destroying I cannot see the beauty, because the beauty is in the moments and in the details. When you destroy something maybe it causes it to disappear physically, but they create a moment of consciousness, the moment of leaving something behind and affected the moment of creation.

In the moment that I've been heated, it takes time to be released and be vulnerable, but layers and layers show off. The moment of vulnerability creates this dramatic explosion and realise all the hidden shout. The shout shows all the layers inside me, and it keeps peeling off.

Layers were there and will be there but at least they have been seen. They never disappeared because they create flakes and leave the shine behind, and it leaves memories and experiences.




*Pearl the object you see and me ''Morvarid (Meaning Pearl in Persian)''


Photography by Misia-O' ©2022
 www.misia-o.com
 @misiaophotography
Photography by Misia-O' ©2022 www.misia-o.com @misiaophotography
Photography by Misia-O' ©2022
 www.misia-o.com
 @misiaophotography
Photography by Misia-O' ©2022 www.misia-o.com @misiaophotography
Photography by Misia-O' ©2022
 www.misia-o.com
 @misiaophotography
Photography by Misia-O' ©2022 www.misia-o.com @misiaophotography
Pearl (مروارید), media item 1
Pearl (مروارید), media item 2
Pearl (مروارید), media item 3
Pearl (مروارید), media item 4
Golden......., media item 2
Golden......., media item 3
Golden......., media item 4

The time that I knew my vagina is not Gold* enough to do what I want to do because it is a flower, and it was fragile and dying soon. I questioned myself, How can we objectify our bodies this way and keep labelling them? what is this labelling telling us? Does it want to take away my freedom my feeling about how I should be about my body?

 With regard to that, I wanted to face my body feel with actual materiality. I put my body with the gold that is too fragile that it is lost its shape with just a touch dissolve to my body and at the same time able to see this private part than usual not to be seen. 

When I made them, it gives me pain for a week.  The pain and the joy and nervousness, Seeing the beauty and ugliness. Seeing this fragility and strongness, seeing the power and powerless. 

Got the glitter of shine on me to create preciousness, but I was hating that glitter sticking to me. 

I kept running and running from it. I wanted to create my own form from it. so, I start using a black sheet and from that, I use my feet to continue to stand out with the pattern I made by myself. That was a pattern and pat I want to create. I didn’t need the pattern of society.







*(a reference to golden willy in the Persian language when the baby boy is born the mother of the baby has a baby talk to the Baby boy that you have a golden willy and baby girl which has a flower Vagina).

The Behrense foundation bursary scholarship