Lia Musante is a jeweler and metal fabricator working in Philadelphia. Since their undergraduate studies in community-based oral history, they link embodied storytelling with metalsmithing by making objects that serve as an archive and by teaching in accessible metal shops.
Lia plays with the lifetimes objects carry to re-forge narratives of possibility. Forgotten detritus reunites with the body as sentimental jewels as part of the cycle in which man-made objects are made, found, and remade. Jewelry externalizes inner feelings, as hardware for tenderness. But this two-ness is slippery: at times the object outlasts fleeting feelings, or the feelings linger far after the object expires. By teasing apart this connection with repaired electronics, faux stones, steel, and sound, these re-linkings and re-contextualizations remember the ever-present kinship we share with our belongings and each other in the end times.
Find Lia on Instagram @liamusante